


i’d be the last shred of truth (in the lost myth of true love)

by gilestel, milominderbinder



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: (Ish) - Freeform, Arranged Marriage, Brakebills Professor Quentin, Falling In Love, Found Family, Hallmark Movie AU, High King Eliot, M/M, Truth Spells
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:22:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21822121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilestel/pseuds/gilestel, https://archiveofourown.org/users/milominderbinder/pseuds/milominderbinder
Summary: After graduating Brakebills, Eliot and Margo accidentally got themselves named the High Kings of Fillory, and they haven't left since.  Cut to five years later, and Eliot is hit with a mysterious truth curse –– right as he’s supposed to marry King Idri for a political alliance, and also right as an unfairly adorable new Brakebills professor, Quentin Coldwater, is visiting for the winter.Now, with his secrets threatening to spill out every second, Eliot may finally have to face some demons, and admit what it is he truly wants.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 25
Kudos: 207
Collections: Magicians Hallmark Holiday Extravaganza





	i’d be the last shred of truth (in the lost myth of true love)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [imagine being loved by me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21812107) by [gilestel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilestel/pseuds/gilestel). 



> fic by me (milominderbinder) and INCREDIBLE art by @ gilestel, as part of the magicians hallmark holiday extravaganza. title by hozier, bc of course. beta read by isleofsolitude, who is lovely. 
> 
> thanks for coming along on this little journey of festive feels! enjoy, guys <3

The long and sordid tale of Eliot Waugh’s life, if boiled down to its bare essentials, goes like this.

Eighteen years in a town-that-will-not-be-named, being teased and beaten and misunderstood and developing a refined hatred of soybean crops that would last his entire life. He labels that miserable era ‘act one’ of his life and escapes, the second they hand him his high school diploma, to a small lush college in upstate New York, majoring in liberal arts because he thinks it would piss off his father most out of everything. Four years doing homoerotic paintings of his friends, learning how to accessorise and shorten the vowels in his accent, and experimenting with party drugs. Graduating from there and immediately being swept up by Brakebills, learning to use the telekinesis he’d been steadfastly ignoring having because he felt like dealing with the whole gay thing made him enough of an outsider already. Meeting Margo, at Brakebills — the first person to _really_ understand him in his whole life, like a soulmate. Doing minimal schoolwork but absolutely ruling the place. Then, graduating. Looking at Margo and saying: I have no fucking idea what to do now.

It was Margo who suggested a gap year. It had sounded very European and cultured, and so Eliot had agreed, for lack of a better idea. And, well, they’d just taken their ‘Compendium of Other Worlds’ class a semester ago. They’d decided to make Fillory the first stop of their travels; apparently there was opium in the air, which seemed a good way to start the party.

That was what Eliot thought of as ‘act two’ of his life. 

Act three began the second they stepped foot in Fillory, and the awed locals announced Margo and Eliot were, by law of the gods, the new King and Queen. 

That was five years ago. Eliot hasn’t left Fillory since then.  
  


* * *

  
Coffee and champagne are the two things Eliot had insisted on trying to introduce to Fillory from earth once it became apparent he’d be permanently residing here. The champagne seems like it may be a lifetime project –– each batch still comes out with more problems than the last –– but the coffee, at least, seemed to take. The plants inexplicably grow upside down here and if you drink more than a few cups in a row with any sort of sweetener in them, you hallucinate for at least three days, but for all intents and purposes, the coffee beans function like coffee beans.

Which, honestly –– thank fuck. Eliot doesn’t think he’d be remotely capable of ruling a kingdom uncaffeinated.

So, he’s holding a huge earthenware mug full of strong americano (although he’s not sure it should be called that when they’re not in America –– Fillorycano?) as he swans into the throne room one crisp autumn morning. The swanning is made rather more dramatic by the long, gauzy train of the cloak he’s wearing today, if Eliot does say so himself, and he feels even more than usual like a _king_ as he throws himself into his throne, one long leg over the arm of it, coffee gripped tight in his hands.

“Okay,” he says to his royal advisor, forgoing a greeting of any kind. “What have you got for me today?”

Tick Pickwick, Eliot and Margo’s main guide in all things Fillory, either really hates them or _really_ loves them, and Eliot has never been able to figure out which. Today, he’s clutching a little scroll of parchment in his hands, and pursing his lips in what could maybe be called a smile in some hemispheres. He stays in the middle of the room, rather than approaching the thrones, but his eyes quickly flick to the empty one beside Eliot.

“Queen Margo won’t be joining us?” he asks, a question even though he clearly knows the answer.

“Queen Margo hosted the Princesses of the Five Points of Fillory for their equinox celebration last night,” Eliot reminds him. The phrase alone puts a fond taste in his mouth. He’d stopped by Margo’s rooms to say a quick hello to them all last night and found himself walking into the midst of an orgy; that was the wonderful thing both about Fillory and about Margo. “I imagine she’ll spend most of today sleeping it off.”

Eliot usually would have joined her and then been in a similar state of debauched exhaustion today, but there were also usually a few men at Margo’s orgies. As much as he likes being witness to hedonism and sensuality in all its forms, nobody at the princess fuckfest had boasted the right genitals or gender identity to make him stay, so he’d left them to it, retreating to his own rooms to drink a single glass of wine and get an early night. This morning he feels well-rested, and not even hungover. Maybe he really is finally becoming some sort of proper adult –– a horrifying thought.

“So, the memos?” Eliot prompts, snapping his fingers at Tick and gulping down a sip of hot coffee. Tick springs back into ‘teacher’s pet except the teacher is the monarch of my whole world’ mode, and unfurls his scroll with a practiced flick of his wrist.

“He-hem,” he clears his throat, then begins, “The delegation of centaurs would like to reschedule their royal visit for spring, to align with a prosperous constellation which will not be visible in the night sky until then.”

“Yes, fine. Put it off even longer than that, if you can –– the centaurs are boring as shit. Don’t tell them I said that, of course, just say it coincides well with our schedule.”

Tick makes a tight noise in the back of his throat like he wants to remind Eliot to be _polite and diplomatic,_ but after five years he seems to have given up on actually saying it, and just strikes that item off his list with a flourish of his quill.

“The town of Fawncove have been enquiring as to why the Lord they elected has not been invited to any of the council meetings thus far.”

Eliot groans, dropping his head against the throne back. Democracy –– along with champagne and coffee, that was the _one_ other thing they’d tried to bring ever so slightly into Fillorian culture. Unfortunately, it’s been a very steep learning curve.

“Because they elected an inanimate fucking object?” he reminds Tick. Tick stares at him blankly. This, apparently, is not an issue in his eyes. “In the name of _all_ the Gods, people here can be so fucking dumb,” Eliot complains. But he steels himself, takes a deep breath, reminds himself this is _his_ kingdom, so. “Draft some bullshit response saying all its invitations must have got lost by the messenger, and invite it to the next one.”

“As you wish, Sire,” Tick agrees, making another note. “Oh, and one last thing. A bunny came from earth, your highness.”

“Earth?” That, at least, is a little interesting. They don’t really have any friends back there anymore, so it’s rare for him or Margo to get a message between realms. “What did it say?”

“It was correspondence from –– forgive me if I pronounce it wrong, Sire, but your university, Broken Bills?” Eliot long ago gave up on correcting Tick’s pronunciations of earth things in order to conserve energy, but rolls his eyes anyway. “Apparently they have such a thing as a ‘Professor of Fillorian History’, and he is requesting to stay at the castle over the winter months to complete a research project on the history of our monarchy?”

 _Ugh,_ Eliot thinks. Fillorian history wasn’t an elective back when he was at Brakebills, but there was Compendium of Other Worlds 101, which covered Fillory briefly. If there’s a history lesson just about this land, now, it’s probably taught by the same guy, and Professor Drieden had been _such_ a drag. The lectures always ran long because he would _not_ stop fucking droning, and if you ever bumped into him in the corridor you were bound to be there for an hour, trapped by his complete lack of social awareness and endless ability to talk about himself. He’d also refused to let Eliot bribe his way to an A in the final.

If Eliot has to be trapped in a castle with _him_ for the whole winter, he’s going to go on a murder spree, or wind up declaring war on another kingdom just for an excuse to leave. Not a good idea.

“Send a bunny back with a very decisive _no_ to that one, Tick. Tell him we’re entirely full up with more important visitors over winter,” Eliot instructs, draining the last of his coffee and then standing up from his throne with a sigh. “We have far better uses for our many guest rooms than _that.”  
  
_

* * *

  
It’s only a few days later that Tick brings far, far worse news.

Margo has just left to set the Princesses of the Five Points back on their journey home, and Eliot had been intending on waiting for her to return before doing anything more important than taking a stroll around the castle gardens to see the last of the autumn flowers before they start dying off over the cold winter. But before he can get further than the grand hall, Tick corners him with an even more skittish-squirrel expression than normal.

“Your highness, a moment of your time?” Tick says, glancing around them before spotting a servant girl dusting in the corner and pulling Eliot away by the elbow. “In _private_.”

Eliot, of course, objects loudly and indignantly to being grabbed by Tick, but reluctantly lets himself be led into a secluded antechamber nearby anyway. He immediately flings himself down into the only chair in there, mostly as a point of protest, and then raises an expectant eyebrow at Tick.

“This had better be good.”

Tick gulps. “Not good, sire, not good at all. Forgive the urgency, but one of the Mages of the North just sent word. They say war is brewing, your Highness.”

“Okay, yes, the Mages of the North,” Eliot agrees, while his brain sort of goes white and makes a high-pitched noise inside. “Now, I’ve paid attention every time you’ve told me about the Fillorian power structures, so I _definitely_ know who those are, but, um, if I were to pretend I didn’t for a moment, what would you say their deal is?”

“We do not have time for a history lesson right now!” Tick blusters. He’s always a jittery character, but this is maybe the most _nervous_ Eliot has seen him look, which is a lot of a thing. “They –– they are simply the _Mages,_ your Highness. They predict things, and they are never wrong. So when they say Loria is just days away from declaring a war of resources on us if we do not reach an alliance, we must act!”

It sinks in all at once. _War._ The people of Fillory didn’t exactly take to Margo and Eliot with the _utmost_ love and devotion at first, but things had settled relatively quickly after their rule began, and most all of the problems they’ve dealt with as rulers have been small things; political structure changes, diplomatic meetings with various strange clans of creatures, resource allocation, disputes within their own kingdom. The threat of war has never been shoved at them with seriousness.

It’s terrifying, even just as a word. Eliot wasn’t built for war. He prefers to flee in the opposite direction of conflict, or at least just get drunk and take a nap until it passes him by. He doesn’t even know what a war in a land of medieval magic would _look_ like.

“Right, right, okay,” he says, voice coming out several pitches higher than he would ideally like. “Act. We must act. Precisely _how_ are we supposed to act, Tick? What will diffuse this situation? Because I’ll tell you right now, I don’t have the constitution for battle.”

Tick, the unhelpful bastard, just stares at him wide-eyed and shrugs. His hands are shaking, but all he says is, “Well, sire, the prediction says war will be declared if we do not reach some sort of alliance. As such, I would recommend making an alliance.”

Eliot lets out a wavering breath, scrubbing his hands over his face to try and tamp down his nerves. 

Becoming High King had seemed all fun and boast worthy and dashingly sexy when he was first assigned the job, but he’d been so naive when he’d agreed. Not that Fillory seemed like they’d let him and Margo turn down the jobs, per se; there had certainly been an element of forceful expectation to it. But Eliot hadn’t put up any resistances, either. He’d had no post-graduation life plans and becoming instantly rich royals with his best friend seemed like a fine substitution for any actual personal goals. Still, sometimes he regrets not thinking more about just how fucking stressful it would be. He’s sure he was never designed to hold the lives of thousands of people in his hands.

“Well, thank you for the grim realities and total lack of help as always, Tick, that’ll be all,” he mumbles through his hands, keen to be left alone to stew in his own terrible decisions. A second later, though, he hears the clock chiming noon in the courtyard outside, and snaps his head up before Tick can get to the door. “Oh, shit. Tick, before you go, send a message to Fray. I won’t be able to make it to her party –– dinner, whatever it is –– today.”

“Her Passage celebration, you of course mean?” Tick says, as if those words are supposed to mean anything to Eliot. Tick produces his ever-present little quill and parchment and poses expectantly in the doorway, looking rather glad to have something to do other than panic. “Certainly, my liege. What would you like me to tell her?”

Well, Eliot can hardly use the _I’m far too stressed to make social appearances because I have to single handedly come up with a way to prevent our land from going to war and probably half our nation dying_ excuse.

“I don’t know, Tick, tell her I’m violently fucking ill or something,” he suggests, just this side of hysterical. “Tell her whatever you like, so long as you leave me alone to, oh, I don’t know, figure out how to save the entire freaking nation before dinner.”

“As you wish, Sire,” Tick says, and flees.

Eliot sighs again, lamenting his entire life and all his choices and why Margo can’t be back from escorting the Princesses of the Five Points back to their ship yet, and reaches for the wine. His goddaughter doesn’t take up much of his mind for the rest of the night. He’s got far scarier places to assign his thoughts.  
  


* * *

  
It is, of course, purely coincidental that this happens at the same time as, worlds away, a man sometimes referred to as Santa Claus breaks out from the Library prison, and accidentally falls through a fountain to Fillory as he makes his escape.   
  


* * *

  
Fray has never been under the impression that Eliot Waugh is anything close to perfect.

She reminds herself of this, fuming, as she races away from Castle Whitespire. She reminds herself of it again as she hitches up her pretty dress –– one of the nicest things she’s ever worn, something _Eliot_ had bought for her –– and stomps off towards the forest that backs the castle, the best shortcut between her home in the local village and Eliot’s stupid castle. 

_Sick,_ of course. She’s stupid for buying the excuse. But she hadn’t really expected Eliot to miss her Passage Ceremony for anything other than an emergency. He can be a little dumb over Fillory things, still, but he _knows_ that a teenager’s Rite of Passage is the most important celebration they’re likely to ever have in their lives. Even more important than weddings.

He’s a shitty person sometimes, but over the last five years, he’s still somehow become her honorary godfather –– the closest thing to a real father she’s ever had. She’d figured that if he said he was too sick to come, he really was too sick to come, and so she’d fretted all evening, and finally left her own party early to come check on him.

Which was, of course, when she had seen him, perfectly fine, sat out in the castle courtyard under the moonlight with Margo, the two of them lowly discussing something. Fray had rushed away before he could see her, hurt in a sharp jolt for a moment –– but now, she’s just _furious._

So furious, in fact, that she’s barely watching where she’s going as she stomps between the trees of the dark forest, and doesn’t notice the other person until she almost goes crashing right into them.

“AAAAAH!” Fray screams immediately, and has a short knife pulled out of her bodice and brandished in the face of the man within the second. As a tiny girl who spends a fair amount of time wandering around dangerous places, she’s very well versed in protecting herself. “Who the fuck are you!”

But instead of doing anything threatening in return, the man just puts his hands up, and sort of smiles at her in the darkness.

“Now, now, there’s no need to be alarmed. But you wouldn’t be able to help me to the nearest town, would you? You see, I just fell through a fountain, and I’m a little disorientated.”

“Maybe I could,” Fray snaps, wrinkling her nose at him. “But why should I help _you?”_

“Interesting question,” the man agrees. Fray is wary by nature, but there’s something about his gentle voice which puts her at ease in a way she can’t quite justify. She tucks her knife away, although she’s still feeling rather grouchy. “I could trade you something. How about a wish? Not to brag, but I’m rather magical; anything you like.”

And, well, there’s only one thing on Fray’s mind in that moment.

“Sure. I wish Eliot fucking Waugh would stop _lying.”  
  
_

* * *

  
It takes Eliot all of an hour, the next morning, to discover that something has gone horribly wrong.

He manages the first hour only because he’s pretty much always silent until he has his coffee. And he has plenty on his mind this morning. After Margo returned the night before, the two of them had sat up and talked about the possibility of war for quite a while. While Margo had, of course, been her impulsive and furious self for much of the conversation, Eliot had tried to tamp her down. And the only thing they’d been able to come up with along the terms of _alliance_ was –– well.

Prince Ess, of Loria, had suggested a marriage to Margo last year. She’d turned him down because Margo had no interest in marrying, and she’d been pretty pissed about it. But now that their whole world might fall apart if they can’t come up with some sort of deal, Eliot had hesitantly thrown the suggestion of marriage on the table.

Except, Margo was still absolutely refusing the idea. Which left Fillory with only one more royal to auction off.

There were no other options, and time seemed of the essence. The royal advisors had sent word to Loria immediately, offering Eliot’s hand to their king if it would help unite their two kingdoms.

He’s met King Idri a couple of times before, and the dude has always seemed –– nice enough, sure, and hot. But Eliot’s never been the _marrying_ sort. Especially not to an effective stranger. A day later, he still can’t decide whether he hopes Idri says yes or no.

Still –– Eliot’s life has never followed any plans or expectations he’s ever had, so he gave up on them a long time ago. If this helps save Fillory, he’ll figure out how to deal with it eventually. But there’s understandably a lot on his mind as he dresses for the day, silently stresses alone in his chambers for a while, and then heads down to breakfast uninterrupted.

It’s at the breakfast table that things go wrong.

The chef is standing just a few feet away, hands clasped behind his back and a puppy-dog eager expression on his face as he watches Margo and Eliot sample some sort of strange fish-paste based pastry that he’s learning to prepare for the first time. It’s supposedly a traditional dish of the sea warlock tribe whose dignitaries will be visiting next month, and the chef is learning to make it in order to please them.

It’s fucking disgusting. Unfortunately, Eliot isn’t even sure whether their chef probably has got it _wrong,_ or whether that’s just how this dish is supposed to taste.

And so, partly because their new chef is a sweet guy who’s at least a couple of years younger than Eliot and Margo, and always so eager to please that crushing him would be like stomping on a kitten’s head, Eliot goes to say, _it’s lovely, Noth, I’m sure the warlocks will love it._

But instead, what comes out is, “This is one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever eaten in my life.”

He freezes, the moment after he says the words. It’s an incredibly strange feeling. The intent to say something, and just –– something else entirely coming out? Eliot swallows, throat feeling strange and untrustworthy all at once.

Noth looks predictably devastated, his big eyes going to the floor and his fawn-like ears drooping –– he’s from one of the more diverse forest villages around here, and from what Eliot can tell, appears to be about one eighth deer. Margo, of course, doesn’t seem to notice anything wrong with Eliot, because she says shit like that to people all the time anyway.

“Mmm, you’re not wrong, El. But if it’s what the warlocks want, it’s what they’ll get,” she sighs, pushing the rest of her plate away and helping herself to more coffee instead.

Coffee, Eliot thinks; maybe he just hasn’t had enough coffee yet this morning. He does turn into a bit of a raving bitch when he’s tired. He quickly gulps down the rest of his mug and then decides, in a more low-stakes way, to try again.

“I love that dress on you, Bambi.”

 _That_ comes out fine. Margo preens at the compliment and says something about the fabric in response, but Eliot can’t pay attention to it, too busy marking off checklists in his mind. Okay, it’s not that some weird urge inside him is stopping him saying anything nice and replacing it with bitchiness instead. Which means ––

Well, it means nothing. Maybe it was just a fluke. 

Still, he decides to test again. If it’s not niceness, the next logical conclusion is that he was having an issue with telling a white lie. So:

 _I think it’ll be a sunny day today,_ he attempts, pulling a statement off the top of his head. Except, to the soundtrack of the harsh rain beating down outside, his voice announces: “It’s definitely raining.”

Shit. _Shit._ Maybe –– Eliot thinks, nervous, a little sickly terrified, maybe this is some problem within his own mind. He wonders if he can even trust his own tongue. Maybe he’s finally snapped under the stress.

Then, of course, he remembers he lives in a world of magic bullshit where people regularly swap bodies and gravity occasionally reverses for a day, and decides it’s probably not his own fault.

Still, he needs to test more. He glances around slightly frantically, latching onto the next nearest thing. _I hate this coffee,_ he tries, but it comes out, “I love this coffee.” _I slept great last night_ turns into, “I stayed up all night having anxiety attacks about this war and I’m fucking exhausted.”

Margo is now _definitely_ staring at him.

“Are you having some sort of breakdown right now?” she asks, blunt as ever.

“Very possibly!” Eliot agrees, voice gone shrill. _I hate you, Margo ––_ “I adore you, you know.” _I want some more of that fish pastry ––_ “I want that fish pastry taken out of this room entirely and I _really_ miss Lucky Charms.” _I am slightly freaking out right now ––_ ”I am seriously freaking out right now!”

“El.” Margo now looks worried enough to set down her mug, leaning across the table towards him with her brow furrowed. “What the fuck is going on?”  
  


“Bambi,” he says, desperately. “I don’t think I can _lie.”_

A situation which Margo sums up very effectively, by responding: “Well, fuck us all raw.”  
  


* * *

  
At first, Eliot thinks he can navigate this by dancing around the truth and never outright lying. He’s always been good at sarcasm, half truths and vagueities. He’ll be fine, right?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work that way. Over the course of just that day, he ends up causing trouble with his royal advisors –– _I usually pretend to agree with what you’re all saying and then just do something else later, but the truth is I have no intention of following any of your advice because you all seem, just, incredibly stupid_ –– and an almost-sent message to an allying kingdom –– _frankly I think the entire place sounds depressing and underdeveloped, but I’m going to pretend to compliment them because we need their army to be on our side if we do go to war ––_ as well as several townspeople who visit to voice local complaints –– _I can never figure out if most kings have to deal with these ridiculous minor problems or whether we just have the most incompetent constituents in the world._

It doesn’t take a genius to quickly figure out that he won’t be able to keep this up _and_ rule a kingdom. Politics involves too much dishonesty if you ever want to keep the upper hand.

“Okay, I will raise the point that this is _not_ working,” he observes to Margo, that evening, after she’s bodily dragged him away from a farmer who looked ready to come at him with an old-style pitchfork and all and settled him down in his chambers with some wine instead.

“You’re fucking telling me!” she agrees. “ _I’m_ supposed to be the blunt asshole and you’re supposed to be the one who smoothes it all over with vague flattery and lies, Eliot. I don’t like this new dynamic at _all_. We’ll have every other kingdom on the planet declaring war on us at this rate.”

“Yeah, I see that,” he agrees, helplessly, downing the rest of his wine before collapsing backwards onto his bed and putting his hands over his eyes. “But what do we _do?”_

“Honestly, I have no fucking clue, El. What do we think this is? Spell? Potion? It might wear off after a night’s sleep, if it’s just something some asshole slipped in your drink or whatever.”

“Maybe,” Eliot agrees, a little uptick of hope snagging his heart. “Fuck, I hope so. I’m far too comfortable lying and bullshitting my way out of any situation I feel threatened in –– I don’t have any other tactics. I don’t like this truth shit at _all.”_

“Fuck. Kind of a shame they didn’t hit me, instead; we’d never have even noticed.”

She has a point there.

“So what am I supposed to do, Bambi? Just sleep on it and hope it goes away by itself?”

“Sure,” Margo says, although she doesn’t sound _all_ that convinced. She climbs onto the bed with him and lays down in the crook of his arm, patting his shoulder just a little too hard to be comforting. “I mean, in my experience of magic bullshit, it usually lasts no longer than a week. And until it goes away, you just won’t say anything in political meetings, okay? Or maybe sit them out altogether?”

“I’m worried you’ll piss too many people off if I’m not there to reign you in,” Eliot says, without really meaning to. Margo glares up at him, but doesn’t bother protesting. 

“Yeah, well, tough shit. We’ll get one of our dumbass council to sit in with me if you’re really that worried.”

“That doesn’t really make me feel much better,” Eliot says, but sighs through the lump in his throat and gathers his arms tight around Margo, at least. Life is so different now than it was five years ago, but there are times like there where he can almost feel like he’s back at Brakebills –– in his room in the Physical Kids Cottage, the first place that ever felt like home, drinking cheap red wine with Margo in his bedroom, cuddling her on his luxurious bed because they were obsessed with touching each other back in the beginnings of their oh-so-special brand of infatuation, and getting into magical hijinks just for the hell of it.

His bed is a lot larger now and their clothes are Renaissance Faire level of ridiculous, but other than that, he can comfort himself with the fact that at least he’ll always have Bambi.

She squeezes him back and says, “And in case that doesn’t work, start making a list of people you’ve pissed off recently. See whose balls I’ve gotta crush to get you back to normal.”

  
  


* * *

The next morning, a rather hesitant Tick peeks his head into the private dining room where Eliot and Margo elected to take breakfast, and announces, “A letter arrived, your Highnesses. The King of Loria is willing to accept a marriage treaty. If it means a resource sharing to benefit both kingdoms, he will take High King Eliot’s hand.”

Eliot’s stomach sinks, and he can’t even blame it on the breakfast this morning, since they threw the rest of those fish pastries out for the carnivorous plants in the garden last night.

“Well, that’s –– good, right?” Margo checks, looking at Eliot with worry, like she’s trying to gauge his reaction through his usually hard-to-read denials. Either fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, she doesn’t have to worry about that today.

“I know this is best for the kingdom, but it feels extremely shitty to me, probably because my childhood issues with my sexuality gave me intimacy issues which have stretched to dreading the mere concept of marriage my whole life,” he says. Which is how he knows the spell hasn’t worn off. “I know it’s only 9AM, but I think it’s okay if I go drink a whole bottle of wine by myself right now. I’ll see you later, Bambi.”  
  


* * *

  
He almost goes right back to bed, but decides that may be a little depressing even for him, so instead Eliot decides to go take his bottle of wine to one of the castle’s nicer drawing rooms, where he’ll have privacy to sulk.

At least, that’s the intention. It doesn’t quite work out that way, because the second he steps into the room –– a room which is _supposed_ to be reserved for just the King and Queen –– he’s stuck with the sight of a man twisted awkwardly into one of the silk-backed chairs.

Eliot doesn’t recognise the man. That’s not necessarily unusual; new servants come in and out of the castle, and travelling dignitaries he’s forgotten about will sometimes come to stay. What is unusual, however, is the fact that this man doesn’t seem to be Fillorian. His big eyes and long hair would look right at home in some fantasy peasant garb, Eliot thinks, but right now he’s wearing jeans and a black hoodie, and wrinkling his nose at an iPhone that definitely won’t get any signal here.

“Who are you?” Eliot asks, bluntly. He’s had a terrible couple days and he just wants to drink his wine alone, damnit; it’s _his_ fucking castle. “This is a private room.”

The man startles immediately, rising halfway out of his seat faster than Eliot can blink.

“Uh— hi,” he says, jamming a strand of long hair behind his ear like a nervous tic. “Sorry, one of the staff said I could be in here — I mean, I’m, uh, Quentin Coldwater.” He looks like that is supposed to mean something to Eliot. Eliot stares back blankly, and Quentin Coldwater gulps. “I’m a professor of Fillorian history at Brakebills? That’s, um, a University on earth, if you didn’t—“

“I know what Brakebills is,” Eliot interrupts. This guy is cute in a neurotic seeming sort of way, but Eliot frankly does not have the energy or headspace to devote to that right now, so he’s decided to just be annoyed. He collapses onto the nearest plush chaise lounge and crosses his legs, chin in one hand, looking as judgmentally regal as possible. “I went there. I’m High King Eliot, in case you didn’t know.”

The series of emotions which cross Quentin Coldwater’s face in that moment are at least amusing; he seems to go from horrified to delighted to mortified in the space of an instant.

“Oh! Wow, it’s, uh — nice to meet you. It’s so cool that it’s a Brakebills alum who’s running Fillory. I mean, I still can’t kind of believe Fillory’s real at all, let alone that I’m only one degree removed from the freaking king and queen, that’s just like all my childhood dreams coming true at once — um. Anyway. So I guess you knew I was coming, then? It was you guys who approved me staying here for my research sabbatical?”

And Eliot will never know if it’s the truth curse or just his own assholish tendencies that make him say: “Actually, I distinctly remember saying you weren’t allowed to come here. I categorically did not want it. Who said you could?”

“Uh.” Quentin Coldwater seems startled, and immediately slightly miserable. Eliot feels kind of bad for being so harsh, but he’s _really_ going through some shit right now, so he can’t feel particularly guilty for snapping at a total stranger. “I, um, I’d thought it was both the monarchs, actually, but I guess maybe it was just the High Queen who approved my stay?”

 _Ugh,_ Eliot thinks. Figures. Margo’s taken to life in Fillory arguably even more than him, but she misses the nerds at Brakebills a lot, too. And she’s got a real habit of taking on pets. She probably thought some drab professor from their old school visiting would be amusing, a little project to occupy herself with for the winter.

“I’m –– I’m on sabbatical, for a research project. So I’m supposed to be here the whole winter,” Quentin fills in, just to add insult to injury.

“Well, you’re here now, so I suppose there’s not much I can do about it,” Eliot sighs. He grips his bottle of wine a little tighter and rubs his temple with the fingers of the other hand. “But I’d _prefer_ it if you weren’t in _here_ right now. I am having an incredibly bad day.”

“Right, right, okay!” Quentin quickly agrees. He scrambles to pick up a haphazard stack of books which look like they’ve been appropriated from the castle library. “Uh, it is only, like, nine in the morning though, right?”

“Yes, _and?”_ Eliot snaps, feeling rather defensive. He clutches his wine to his chest and says, “It’s possible to have a bad day already in the first hour of waking up, you know. There is a lot of serious shit going on around here.”

“Oh.” Quentin Coldwater blinks at him, his weight shifting between his feet indecisively. “I’m sorry to hear that. If you ever want to talk about it, I mean, I’m a really good listener.”

And just when he goes to say, _I really don’t want to talk to anyone about this,_ Eliot instead comes out with, “I seem to have been either cursed or poisoned to be unable to lie and it is screwing up a huge amount of what I’m supposed to do around here, which currently includes getting engaged to a man I’ve only met twice and am terrified of marrying.”

Quentin Coldwater’s mouth opens and closes again, but no sound comes out. His big brown eyes just stare at Eliot, full of some odd emotion and looking desperately unsure of what to say.

Fuck, but he’s cute. Eliot chases the idea from his mind by saying, “ _Please_ leave me alone now.”

So Quentin does, giving one awkward little wave and then fleeing from the room.

Eliot watches him go. He has a really cute butt.

 _Not that there’s any point in noticing it,_ Eliot thinks, miserably. He knows how Fillorian marriages go. If he’s gonna go through with this with Idri, it’ll be an end to his days of fucking around with every cute guy in his sight. Even awkward Brakebills professors with terrible timing and tight jeans.

Eliot sets about drinking his wine. By lunch time, he’s almost convinced himself he won’t have to bump into Professor Coldwater again for the rest of his stay.  
  


* * *

  
“So,” Eliot says, pointedly, fixing Margo with a judging stare so that she _knows_ he already knows the answer when he asks: “Do you happen to know anything about this Brakebills professor we’re supposedly adopting for the winter?”

“Oh, yeah,” she replies, casual as anything, draping herself sideways over her throne. Eliot crosses his arms where he’s stood in the center of the room and doesn’t break his gaze. “He sent some big long gushy letter about how much he loved the Fillory books as a kid and they saved his life and now he’s gonna be a professor at Brakebills but he needs to research first and could he please come here, blah blah blah. It was cute. And he sounded like he’d be some decent winter entertainment.”

“Entertainment? The last thing we need around here right now is any more entertainment. The ruining of my whole life feels plenty entertaining enough to me!” 

Eliot very rarely gets _angry_ –– judgy, disappointed, dismissive, sure, but not _angry._ It’s usually too much effort. Right now, though, it’s the only thing he can feel boiling up in him, and he’s glaring hopeless daggers at Margo as he speaks, voice pitching louder and louder. She at least has the decency to look surprised for a moment, one eyebrow shooting up into her hairline.

“Wow, calm down, time-bomb. Did you actually meet him yet? There’s no way you can be mad if you’ve met him. He’s like a pathetic little puppy begging for a kiss on the forehead.”

“I’m –– yes, I met him, and yes he was cute and entirely inoffensive to me, but you said someone could come stay in our home without listening to me, so I’m still mad!”

“Okay, Eliot, honey, we have like a thousand rooms here, and he’s gonna be gone half the time doing his little research trips anyway. You need to calm the fuck down. Are you really mad at me?”

She bats her big bambi eyes, and _ugh._ The answer is obvious, of course. And while he would usually hedge and bluster his way through a response without any real honesty in it, today ––

“I’m not really mad at _you,_ I’m upset about my entire situation and I’m scared of whatever spell is on me and I’m _terrified_ of getting married and bumping into a stranger who I said I didn’t want to come stay here was just the icing on the cake of a bad day but anger is the only way I really know how to process very scary things because of my childhood! So I’m yelling at you even though I love you because all I really want to do is cry!”

Fuck it all.

Margo gets off her throne at last and comes to wrap him up in a hug, but she’s grinning as she does it.

“I don’t think I actually mind this honesty spell bullshit,” she says, as she pats his chest. “We are gonna get to the bottom of _so_ much shit before this wears off.”  
  


* * *

  
It’s three more days until Eliot bumps into Quentin Coldwater again. Three days of waking up each morning desperately hoping the spell on him will have ended and wanting to jump off the castle roof when he realises he hasn’t, three days of avoiding all the politics of his _whole entire job_ and being locked out of important meetings by Margo, three days of mostly laying around drinking wine and feeling miserable. As opposed to his preferred state of laying around drinking wine and feeling neutral. 

Honestly, he’s impressed that it’s taken that long to bump into the professor again though. Margo was unfortunately right that the castle is big enough for it to not be remotely an issue.

It’s completely by happenstance that they bump into each other, too. Eliot’s just been kicked out of the throne room by Margo, because the representative from the sea warlock tribe has arrived and she doesn’t trust him to not blurt out something offensively truthful. Hearing this from Margo is a particular blow, considering her _entire_ brand of human being is ‘tells literally everyone what she thinks ever even when it totally screws things up’ and Eliot’s used to being the one smoothing over for _her._ So he’s kind of sulking, as he makes his way along one of the less-used corridors back towards his own chambers to brood in peace, and unexpectedly finds himself face to face with Quentin Coldwater

Quentin has his head in a book as he’s walking along, which seems impractical to El, but startles and looks up from it when he hears a noise, his big brown eyes going wide. “Oh. King Eliot.”

“Sorry about being rude when we first met,” Eliot says, before he can help it. He’s not the apologising sort –– it clashes with his image and also his complete repulsion with sincere emotional concepts. But Quentin already knows about the unfortunate truth spell, so. “I was having a very bad day; it wasn’t personal.”

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” says Quentin. He’s got a warm voice, nicer than Eliot really noted the first time they spoke. “I can imagine having a, uh, truth-curse or whatever would _really_ suck. I’ve actually been looking at some of the books in the castle library, trying to figure out if there’s precedent for this sort of thing in Fillory, but unless you drank from a particular well at a centaur orgy during the last full moon, I haven’t found anything yet.”

Eliot finds himself just –– blinking.

And when that doesn’t help, he blinks again. Quentin Coldwater’s face swims out of his vision and back into it again, earnest and unchanging.

“You’ve been –– looking stuff up for _me?”_ Eliot checks. It seems ludicrous. He himself hasn’t even become desperate enough about the situation to try and start researching it yet, still clinging to his stubborn hope that it’ll go on its own. Margo remains convinced it will run its course in a week. Tick had said he’d look into it, but that was _Tick._ “You really don’t have to do that. I mean, shouldn’t you be working on your research project? You don’t even know me.”

“Sure I do. I mean, you’re the High King. Of the place I’m literally employed to care about. Not that, uh, not that I wouldn’t care if I _wasn’t_ employed, it’s just –– I really love Fillory, okay, and it’s _so_ cool being here, and you’re letting me stay and all, and I just want to. Be helpful.”

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Eliot says. They’re still just stood around in the empty corridor, staring at each other. Trying to seem an ounce more casual, he leans back against the stone wall. “There are cool parts, and I love it because it’s my kingdom, but a lot of stuff here really sucks, too. You shouldn’t get too rose-coloured-contacts over it.”

Coldwater rubs at his nose, glancing around them for a moment as if he’s not sure what Eliot could possibly be talking about. He’s only been here a few days, though. He probably hasn’t even adjusted to the opium in the air yet –– he’ll see the downsides eventually.

“Well,” says Eliot, taking pity when the Professor looks like he’s floundering too much for words. “You really don’t have to keep looking into things for me, but let me know if you do find anything useful. I am not enjoying my forced enrollment into truthfulness at all.”

“I will,” says Coldwater, nodding eagerly. His long hair flops backwards and forwards in front of his face. Something inside Eliot curls up. “There’s got to be _something_ about truth curses in one of those books –– the library is huge!”

Eliot hums noncommittally; he’s spent almost no time at all in the castle library for the entire five years he’s lived here. It brings him out in hives. He’s either allergic to dusty old paper or to the spirits of all the boring old straight men who wrote those history books.

“Yes, well, feel free to take full advantage of it. And you can come down for meals in the main dining chamber with me and Margo, while you’re at it. You don’t have to creep around me or anything, I don’t mean to seem so grumpy.”

Eliot honestly feels bad as soon as he says that, because Coldwater immediately perks up –– which makes it super clear that he _had_ been trying to avoid Eliot. Eliot wonders why he makes such terrible first impressions on people so often.

“Okay! Uh, thank you, your Highness.”

It feels, for a moment, almost ridiculous to be addressed that way. He’s entirely used to it from the people of Fillory, of course. But it’s when it’s someone from _earth._ Eliot has been thrown into being a high king in this strange backwards world, but he’s not remotely qualified to be any ruler of _any_ sort back on earth, and he knows it, and it feels so absurd that laughter bubbles up in his throat.

“Just –– Eliot. Eliot is fine. I’ll see you at dinner.”  
  


* * *

  
It’s when the seventh day passes and the spell still hasn’t broken that _Margo_ begins to get worried.

“Harmless magic shit _always_ runs its course in a week,” she says, pacing in front of him while Eliot lays, nursing his temples, on a particularly luxurious chaise lounge. He’s clearly not paying enough attention for her liking, because she stomps one of her high heels on the ground right in front of him, making him wince at the _clank_ noise. “Have you been working on that list of people you pissed off, like I asked you? I’m gonna go start breaking skulls and see if that fixes anything.” 

“I can’t think of anyone! I mean, not that I’ve pissed off _recently_ . That guy I slept with when the delegation from Trillor were visiting, maybe, and then didn’t fire-message him afterwards –– but it’s not like he tried to get in touch with me either. And I think the blowjob I gave was _far_ good enough to make up for a lack of emotional investment.”

Margo stops for a moment to throw up her hands and groan, and then resumes pacing.

“I hate this shit. And as usual, our only guide to this fucked up land of obscure magical rules is _Tick,_ who’s never any help at all. Is there anyone else we know who’d know about dumbass trickery magic? What about your little ward?”

“Fray?” Eliot wrinkles his nose. “She’s not my _ward._ She’s just sort of my goddaughter.”

“She’s your weird daughter figure one way or another, El. She used to live with those fairy fuckers, though. She might know something about this sort of magic.”

“Hmm. Maybe.” The headache worming its way through his skull feels far more pressing than anything else right now, and he closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see Margo’s insistent face staring down at him. “I haven’t seen her in a couple of weeks, but I’ll ask her if she’s heard of anything like this, next time I do.”

“Great, yeah, don’t sound _too_ enthusiastic, El. I’m only trying to save your entire ass here.”

“Oh, don’t be dramatic, Bambi. I mean, I fucking hate this, true, but it’s not _too_ bad, is it? We’ve managed so far.”

“Yeah. _So far._ ” Her voice sounds suddenly far more chilling, and El opens his eyes against his better judgement. She’s staring down at him with her hands on her hips, eyes narrowed. “But in case you’ve forgotten, we’ve only got a month until the delegation from Loria is going to be here for your _wedding._ A wedding which is the only thing stopping us from going to war. How well do you think it’s gonna go down if you can’t lie your way through _that?”_

Which. 

Shit. She has a point.

“Okay, Bambi, yes. You’re right. I’ll start asking around more, see who can help out. Your nerdy Professor said he was looking into things too, so I’ll check with him.”

“Yeah? How are you liking Quentin, by the way?” Margo is, suddenly, grinning. Eliot hates her. “Still mad I said he could come stay here?”

“No,” says Eliot, because his stupid traitorous mouth won’t let him stay quiet. “No, I’m not mad anymore.”  
  


* * *

  
Once he stops trying to be an invisible presence in the castle, Eliot learns several things about Quentin Coldwater rather quickly.

He learns that he is intelligent. He learns that he is anxious, constantly. He learns that he talks too fast for his own good, but is usually saying twice as many interesting things as other people would in the same amount of words. He learns that Margo adores him, for some strange reason, within scant days of even meeting him, when she’s usually so very slow to come to affection.

The books that had made Margo want to come to Fillory herself originally, while Eliot just tagged along, the books Eliot had never bothered to read because they sounded dull as hell –– it turned out Quentin adores them too. He and Margo can suddenly be found talking about the series endlessly, any time they get a chance.

Of course, chances are rather slim with Margo being so busy. So in the times that she’s _not_ available, Quentin turns to Eliot instead as sort of a replacement. At least it feels that way at first, while Margo’s rushed off her feet and Eliot is being banned from every important meeting in the kingdom, given nothing else to do except Professor Babysitting duty. Quentin seems wary around Eliot at first, probably justifiably since that first meeting. But at the same time –– seems so keen to learn about this place, and everything in it, that he just can’t hold himself back.

That’s the most important thing Eliot learns, as he’s getting to know Quentin Coldwater.

He’s passionate. Passionate about Fillory particularly, in ways Eliot can’t be. It feels both connecting and disconnecting; both similar and dissimilar. Eliot loves this place, his _kingdom._ Other than Brakebills it’s the only place he’s ever called home, and even more than Brakebills it’s the first place that’s ever felt like his, like an environment he has _control_ over. He loves what Fillory has given to him, and the role it’s taken in what almost feels like his healing process. Like it’s helping him learn how to touch things without breaking them.

But he also sees the problems in Fillory, and there are elements he can never understand. Outdated laws, confusing societal structures. 

Just a few conversations with Quentin Coldwater open his mind to more of those things than five years of living in this castle has.

Eliot doesn’t actually know how Quentin knows so much about all of it, without ever having been to Fillory before. Sure, he knows Quentin read those kids books, but they weren’t very accurate. There must have been a litany more research at Brakebills. Quentin must have taken this Fillorian History class himself before teaching on it, although it wasn’t an option when Eliot was last there, five years ago.

He says that to Quentin one day, when Margo has abandoned them to go off and do something important that Eliot can’t be trusted to assist with. He’s moping just a little, in one of their grand sitting rooms with an open bottle of wine, but less than he would be if he’d been left totally _alone._ And also, actually, maybe not moping a huge amount at all. He can’t help it; Quentin Coldwater is consistently turning out to be a surprisingly good distraction.

“So when exactly did they introduce this Fillorian History thing? Could have helped me a lot with my future career if they’d taught it while I was still there,” Eliot says, laughing into his cup. Quentin, beside him on the plush couch, tucks a long strand of hair behind his ear, and Eliot can suddenly see his jawline in sharp detail. “It used to just be a footnote on Compendium of Other Worlds, with the most boring professor alive.”

It’s then that Quentin admits he actually invented the class.

“It’s just a part time one,” he quickly clarifies, when Eliot looks at him with wide-eyed impression. “I mean, I’m teaching it one semester a year on a trial basis. So I haven’t actually started yet –– last year I was just a TA on a few classes. But Dean Fogg’s giving me a shot.”

“He must like you a lot,” Eliot observes, remembering the dean, who never liked Eliot particularly –– although they did meet on some strange level, almost like equals, for much of Eliot’s time there. The sort of begrudging respect which came from Dean Fogg knowing Eliot was going to be causing havoc and dragging down the grades of his entire discipline for as long as he was there, but that Eliot was doing it wholly and solely to be true to himself. 

“I don’t know about _trusts_ me,” Quentin says, although his cheeks are turning pink like, yeah, maybe that’s exactly what it is. “I wasn’t that great of a student. I mean –– mediocre. I wasn’t bad or anything, I didn’t, like, fail out, but, uh. Yeah, my discipline’s not even interesting. Repair of small objects.”

“A physical kid too!” Eliot’s unjustifiably thrilled by that news, although minor mending, he will admit, is not that sexy. “You’re not teaching on the Minor Mending class then?”

“I mean, I might, in the semesters where my history class doesn’t run,” Quentin says, with a shrug. “But I’m more interested in this stuff. Theory, and history, and Fillory in general. That’s kind of what they don’t tell you at Brakebills, isn’t it? That your discipline’s just what sort of magic you’re best at –– it doesn’t _have_ to be what you want to do with your life. They shove us into different houses and classes and mentoring programs all based on it, but I’d rather do something I really enjoy, even if it’s not where my _destiny_ is supposed to be. I've had it with destiny, honestly.”

It’s surprising –– Eliot’s never really thought about it that way before. Quentin has a point.

“Yeah, I don’t really use telekinesis much, being a king,” he agrees. “And I certainly never thought politics would be where my life ended up. Then again, I didn’t have any plans for where I _was_ going, so.”

“You must have wanted to do something,” Quentin says. 

“Not really. I never really… figured my life would go this long,” Eliot admits. There’s the fucking truth spell again, making him admit that. This is the problem with talking to Quentin –– Eliot all too often finds himself forgetting his current curse, and then talks into corners where he has no choice but to blurt out something far too revealing.

To soften the moment, Eliot retreats inside his wine chalice for a moment, drinking heavily. In the back of his mind, he remembers with a shudder that he’ll soon be turning thirty. _Thirty._ What a foreign concept. 

When his parents were thirty, they had _four_ sons already, and they’d already completely locked themselves into a life of misery. Eliot hasn’t locked himself into a life of misery –– against all his expectations –– but he doesn’t think he’s locked himself into happiness, either. He doesn’t really feel like he’s actually found anything he’s been looking for, yet. 

“Oh. Yeah, I get that,” Quentin says, suddenly looking more serious. He glances down at his hands, tugging the sleeves of his hoodie down over his wrists.

Eliot’s been surprised that the one element of Fillorian culture Quentin doesn’t seem keen to embrace is the clothes. He must have brought an endless supply of jeans and hoodies with him on this trip, because he’s been wearing them the whole time.

“Well, we’re both here now, so here’s to all life’s endless fucking surprises,” Eliot says, raising his chalice of wine, trying to drag Quentin back out of whatever shadowy place he just fell inside his own mind. “May they keep hitting us from every direction until we land somewhere we like.”

After a moment, it seems to work. Quentin blinks, and looks at Eliot, and clinks his cup against El’s. And for the briefest of moments, they look into each others’ eyes while they drink, and Eliot’s whole body runs up and down with warmth.  
  


* * *

  
“It’s been two weeks, Eliot. Two fucking weeks. We have to gird our loins and admit this fucking curse isn’t going away on its own.”

Margo, as so very unfortunately often happens, is right. 

“Do you have any ideas for how we _do_ get rid of it, then, Bambi? Because believe me when I say I am _entirely_ open to suggestions. And you can believe me on that because I _can’t fucking lie.”_

“Don’t get snippy with me, El. I know it’s a damn bitch of a situation, but I’m the one who wants to fix your ass around here.”

“We both want to fix this,” he says. “I _desperately_ want to fix it. Half because we are in the absolute wrong career to have to be upfront all the goddamn time, and half because I am desperately uncomfortable with the amount of emotional revelations which keep pouring out of me.”

“We’ll get some researchers on it or something,” she says, although the promise feels far too broad to really contain any hope. “Fuck, I mean, we’re in a magical ass kingdom! If _someone_ around here can’t break a measly curse on their High fucking King, what’s the goddamn point!”

Eliot swallows hard against a knot in his throat. He’s always felt that there, ever since he was a little kid, and sometimes it seems to get smaller, just a little easier to talk around, and other times it feels so swollen that he can barely choke out a single thing. Right now, it almost hurts to make a sound.

“What if we can’t fix me, Margo?” he asks lowly. In the flicker of firelight, his Bambi looks at him with her big eyes, and no smile on her lips. It’s kind of why he loves her, and why hates being the way he is right now, at the same time. No false promises.

“Well, you might have to give up politics and fucking around, but you’ll always have me,” she says. It’s something, at least, but it doesn’t make El feel all that much better.

There’s a quick knock from outside Margo’s chamber, and a voice which has become far too familiar in the space of two weeks tentatively calls through the doorway. “Uh, your highne–– Margo? I found that book we were talking about earlier, if you wanted to take a look –– oh, it’s Quentin, by the way!”

He ends the little spiel with another knock.

“Well, this is getting ridiculous. Is he hot on you?” Eliot asks, before she can go let the poor kid in. As he asks the question, something feels odd in his stomach which he can’t really blame on the wine they’ve been drinking. He pushes it deep down with all the other odd feelings he’s ever had.

“Isn’t everyone?” Margo asks, with a rather wicked grin. Eliot inclines his head; point. Even he’s had his moments with Margo, and he’s as gay as it’s probably possible to be. “But to answer your clear jealousy, it’s not like that with Quentin, no. I think he just likes me with his big nerd brain because I’ll talk about books and shit with him, not anything else. He looked terrified out of his wits when he saw too much of my cleavage in that pink dress last week.”

She laughs to herself, and then is off to answer the door before Eliot can even splutter out that he’s _not jealous, what the fuck!_ It’s just as well, because he has a horrible feeling the words wouldn’t have come out like that if he tried to say them.

And, well, all hope is lost then anyway, because Professor Coldwater is inching into the room, just oozing sincerity and dorkiness and all the things Eliot is an absolute sucker for.

“Oh! Uh, King Eliot, I didn’t realise you were here too.”

Quentin glances between the pair of them like he thinks he’s just interrupted something –– _what_ he thinks he’s interrupted, Eliot has absolutely no idea. He’s quickly learning that Quentin always assumes he’s operating on a basis of _you’re not supposed to be here_ and works his way up from there, though, and it makes Eliot feel so bad he can kind of only really roll his eyes.

“Quentin, I told you to just call me Eliot. It makes me feel completely ridiculous to have someone else from Brakebills calling me _K_ _ing.”_

“Eliot, right,” Quentin agrees. El reluctantly thinks about how nice his name sounds coming out of Quentin’s mouth, and then pats the space next to him on the couch.

“Well, take a seat, grab a glass,” says Eliot, picking up the bottle of fancy wine. “I won’t join in if you guys are going to talk nerd shit, but I’ll keep the drinks coming at least.”

Which is precisely what he does, for the next hour, while Quentin goes bright-eyed and nearly manic with energy, flipping through some tiny rare book which is somehow related to his and Margo’s beloved kids books, and showing her things which leave her gasping in delight. Eliot is utterly left out of the conversation, but he finds that he doesn’t mind. Watching the pair of them, leaning their heads together on the coffee table like a couple of kids, he actually doesn’t mind at all.  
  


* * *

  
The next day, just innocently walking down the corridor, something in Eliot’s stomach tugs and absolutely _compels_ him to say, “Even though they’re not remotely in style, I really love your shoes, Tick.”

Tick looks delighted. Eliot is horrified, instantly. “Don’t ever tell a soul I said that,” he warns, with all the power of the High King in his voice, and runs away. He _really_ does need to fix this fucking spell.  
  


* * *

  
The seasons in Fillory don’t turn exactly like those on earth, but the Fillorian version of a winter is hitting with all sorts of bitterness. The castle goes into hibernation mode, stocking the pantries with enough dried food to last them a decade and filling an entire stable with firewood.

“It’s been a decade since we had a winter like this,” one of the cooks tells Eliot one morning, as she’s handing him a cup of warm, spiced apple juice, and the first flurries of snow are beating against the frosted windowpane of the kitchen. “It’s goi’na be a long one. But I bet that wedding of yours’ll be just what we need to keep everyone’s spirits up, your highness.”

“Not _everyone’s_ spirits,” Eliot grumbles, unfortunately, because it’s true –– he’d be putting on a much braver face if he was currently able to fib about it, but his own spirits are decidedly dampened by the whole thing. Upon the cook’s rather affronted look, he adds, “But, uh, yes, I do hope you’ll all enjoy the festivities.”

Fillorian weddings, as it turns out, or at least the royal ones, are like a week long event. More of a festival than just a ceremony. No real _plans_ have been made yet, beyond announcing the engagement, but he knows it’s all going to happen awfully fast once Idri arrives. 

Maybe the snow will delay the arrival of the Lorians, Eliot thinks hopefully, as he watches the crystalline little snowflakes settling onto the grass outside. Winter always feels like a time to be slow, to go deep and just savour your own little place in the world –– it’s not a time to be rushing into things you don’t want to do in the first place.  
  


* * *

  
Tick doesn’t like Quentin, which kind of just makes Eliot like Quentin all the more.

Most of Tick’s objections seem to be to the fact that Quentin –– giant Fillory nerd that he is –– keeps trying to join in with the royal council meetings. Eliot’s fine with this, and has given his permission for Quentin to be in there plenty of times. So what’s _really_ annoying Tick is the fact that Quentin’s got an extremely good understanding of Fillorian politics and is coming up with better ideas than half the real council.

It’s very amusing to Eliot. Quentin seems flustered by the whole thing, but pleased. If he didn’t already have a career he was so excited about, Eliot would offer him an Advisor job (somehow, without admitting that it would be at least fifty percent desperate selfishness, wanting to keep Quentin around).

Quentin doesn’t spend _all_ his time with the council, though, especially since Eliot’s practically banned from the room in his current state. Good soul that he is, Q also comes to join Eliot in his moping, and helps him not feel too terribly left out. Usually this involves drinking wine in one of the castle’s cosier rooms, but even Eliot has to admit that his day-drinking has gone past charming levels lately, so on this particular day he suggests a walk around the gardens instead.

The royal gardens are beautiful, but they’re not really designed for winter. The snow is a foot deep now, and has enveloped even the hardiest of flowers and bushes still trying to cling to life. All the trees have lost their leaves and cower over the white landscape like skeletons. It’s still sort of beautiful, with the winding stone paths mostly shovelled of snow so that you can still walk the space, but also barren in a way which makes Eliot think a little too hard about life.

He leads Quentin down to an ornate wrought iron bench penned in by two stone walls, so it’s at least a little out of the elements, and sits down, tugging his thick fur coat tighter across his chest. Quentin joins him –– sitting next to Eliot, maybe an inch between their thighs, rather than at the perfectly acceptable other side of the long bench.

Eliot tries not to read anything into that, and also doesn’t let himself think too long on the fact that Quentin –– who’d turned up in Fillory with a wardrobe of mostly hoodies and one thick denim jacket for the ‘winter months’ –– is borrowing one of Eliot’s coats. It’s a rather plain felted black one, but it comes down to his knees and he looks utterly delightful in it.

Still. Quentin sort of always looks delightful. It’s an unfortunate truth Eliot is slowly learning to work around. The best way, he’s discovered, is simply to distract himself by bringing up other topics.

“I’m so bored of missing everything. And there’s the monthly People’s Summit today, too,” Eliot grumbles. He slouches back against the bench, glancing sideways at Quentin, who furrows his eyebrows the way he always does when he’s approached with one of the few Fillorian things he _doesn’t_ know. Most of these things seem to be things Margo and Eliot have introduced in their rule. Eliot explains, “That’s basically just when all the townsfolk get to come to the castle and complain about their problems of the month, and me and Margo try and figure out how the fuck to fix them. I mean, it’s always a bit of a boring nightmare, but I don’t like _missing_ it.”

“Didn’t you get the people to elect Lords, for that very purpose?” Quentin asks. Eliot sighs, and puffs a hot breath into his cupped hands as another light flurry of snow blusters across the gardens.

“That’s more of a work in progress. Fillory and democracy in general, I mean. Three of the new lords have already been turned into gourds by their constituents. One region elected a swamp monster who presumably has some very intelligent ideas, but also can’t speak any recognisable language. And another region elected a sword. Just. An inanimate sword.”

“Oh,” says Quentin, looking like he’s processing that, and also processing the fact that in Fillory you do need to clarify a sword is _inanimate_. “Yeah, I can see how that would make cabinet meetings a little tricky.”

“We’re working on it,” El promises, following a sudden impulse to reach up and affectionately pat Quentin’s hair. His heart thumps as he does it and he tries desperately not to let it show, especially when Quentin doesn’t seem to react other than nuzzling the tiniest bit into Eliot’s hand. “And until then, we’re doing things the good old fashioned way, like Brakebills taught us: booze and improvising.”

“That does sound like Brakebills,” Quentin agrees.

“Well, you’re the professor there, not me.”

Q snorts. “Not quite yet, technically, but yeah. Still, I can see how that’s all a lot more difficult while you’ve got this –– curse thing going on. If you’re sure it even is a curse?”

“I don’t feel there’s much point in debating the componential differences between curses, hexes, spells, wishes, potions, and poisons. But it’s _something_ fucked up, that’s for sure.”  
  
"Yeah," Quentin agrees, with a sigh. He tucks himself a little closer to Eliot. "Still. There's something nice about honestly, at least. I know it's not inconvenient right now, but –– at least you've got an excuse to not have to pretend."

* * *

  
It’s after a month that Eliot finally also admits he doesn’t know what the _fuck_ to do about the truth curse. He’s been treating it the same way he’s treated everything inconvenient in his life always –– ignoring it, drinking a lot, and hoping it will go away. But it’s _not_ going, and he still doesn’t have a fucking clue what he’s supposed to be doing about it.

It could be anything. That’s the problem. It could be some totally ambiguous milestone based spell which will end when he completes whatever the purpose was. It could be a potion effect that he just has to find the right antidote to. It could be a fucking permanent condition, not meant to be ended at all, which he’ll have to go on some crazy mission to reverse. But before he can figure out how to end it, Eliot has to identify what the problem actually _is._

That’s where the hard part comes in. He’s not good at stuff like that. The research side of things. And while there are plenty of ostensibly intelligent people employed in the castle to help with just such mishaps, they’re largely all tied up with the war council right now, expending their energy on important matters of diplomacy and trying to stop the entire world from turning on Fillory.

So, unsure quite what else to do, Eliot finds himself turning to –– 

“Okay, so tell me again about when the curse first appeared,” says Quentin.

He looks every part something Eliot would have dreamed up as the beginning part of a sex fantasy about a hot TA. He’s pacing in front of a roaring fireplace with the sleeves of his woolen sweater pushed up to his elbows, a pencil tucked behind one ear, tangled up in a few strands of his soft-looking hair, and he’s talking with his hands waving all over the place, so Eliot can’t stop watching his fingers. It’s vitally unfair.

Eliot is also having a bit of a hard time remembering why he cares about this dumb spell at all.

“Ugh, I’ve gone over this so many times already with Margo,” Eliot complains, flopping back dramatically onto the chaise lounge, his long legs sprawling over the edge. He closes his eyes and then opens them briefly, just in time to see Quentin glancing his way –– is Eliot crazy, or is Q looking at his legs? Quentin looks away quickly either way, so Eliot shakes off the moment, sighs, tries very hard to think about far more boring things. “But I guess I’ll tell the story again. So, it was just after ––”

This is the thing about Quentin. He’s easy to talk to. 

(Eliot sometimes finds himself thinking, traitorous to all his own values, that he might talk like this with Quentin even if he currently _was_ capable of lying.)  
  


* * *

  
Six weeks after the truth curse first hits him, Eliot learns that he can no longer even lie to _himself._

“You are utterly smitten with Quentin Coldwater,” he mutters to himself in the mirror above his water basin, his reflection looking wan and tired. He says it, and he knows it’s true. “You’ve never felt like this before. You didn’t know you _could_ feel this way.”

His reflection says it all right back to him. No lies.

Eliot splashes his face with water, and looks back into the glass. He doesn’t look any better than he did before. He’s thinking, for the thousandth time, about the bounds of Fillorian marriage. About the fact that, however nice Idri is, he’s going to be the _only_ person Eliot can be intimate with for the _rest of his life_ –– and how he doesn’t want that –– and how Quentin Coldwater looks in winter sunlight, or with his eyes alight over a book, or when a drop of wine clings to his bottom lip, just begging Eliot to reach in.  
  


* * *

  
Two months after Quentin Coldwater’s arrival, he and Eliot get drunk in Quentin’s room.

He’d been assigned one of the shittier guest rooms when he first arrived, but El had quickly upgraded him to a nicer one, with a view of the gardens and a huge fireplace and a writing desk for him to do his work at. Usually when they hang out, they do so in Eliot’s vast chambers, but it’s nice to be in Quentin’s space for once. Even if he’s only living here temporarily –– and Eliot does have to remind himself, occasionally, that Quentin is _not_ going to be a permanent fixture in his life –– he’s still made the room feel like his own. Little evidences of his life, his interests, his passions, all just scattered around.

Eliot knows he’s fucked because of how fond it makes him feel to see the sleeve of a grey hoodie poking messily out from underneath the ornate four poster bed. The way he wants to stroke his fingers over the strewn pieces of parchment on Quentin’s desk, all scratched on with Q’s terrible handwriting, and is even fascinated by the way he’s made his bed, a little lopsided and with all the pillows strewn about like he’s nesting in them.

They don’t sit on the bed, choosing the lounge on the plush rug in front of the roaring fireplace and chase away the biting cold instead, and they drink three bottles of blackberry wine, until their lips are tingling and Eliot can’t feel his toes, can only feel the heat of the fire waving against his face from one side and the heat of Quentin’s body pressed up against the other, and they’re laughing about nothing, and trying to sit up has them wavering all over the place, losing their grip in hysterics, and Eliot’s hand slips over Quentin’s soft wrist, and they just go tumbling into each other.

Eliot kisses Quentin Coldwater for the first time like that. Prickled hot by the fire, blackberry wine on their mouths, the world at their backs. Quentin lets out this little gasp the second their lips touch, and then just _throws_ himself into it –– fumbling hands up to cup Eliot’s face, sloppy tongue pressing into El’s mouth, pressing their chests all the way together until Quentin’s spine is bowing into Eliot. The kiss is off-centre and messy, entirely imperfect in their drunkenness as they grapple with each other’s bodies and try to suck on each other’s lips, but it sends waves of shocks through Eliot like someone just shoved a defibrillator inside of him.

But. Of course. Nothing can fucking go well. Quentin pulls away with a wet noise to catch a breath, and Eliot feels that tow hook tug in his belly again, that curse-feeling which means he’s being forced to mess everything up.

“I’m getting married in two weeks,” Eliot whispers into the space around Quentin’s mouth, and the air around them just shatters.

Quentin manages to find his legs again, like Eliot’s words had even sobered him up a little, and wavers to his feet while Eliot just sits miserably on the rug. Quentin lurches unsteadily away from him. Eliot wants to reach for him, any part of him, catch onto his ankle like a child, but his hands won’t work right.

“I’m going on a research trip. The –– to the, I mean, to the Second Point by the Sea,” Quentin says. His voice is thick and he won’t look at Eliot, just wobbles over to his desk and starts picking up papers, things Eliot is sure aren’t remotely related to his work, with clumsy drunk fingers. “Just, uh, before the snow gets too bad and we’re completely stuck here or anything. It’s really historically relevant and I’ve been interest’d in it ever since I read the books when I was a kid, so I’ve –– I’ve gotta go there. For a few days. Mmm.”

His voice is thick. 

“I hope you have a good time,” Eliot says. Turns out, that’s true. He hopes Quentin always has a good time, even if it means Quentin’s away from him.

And then, because he knows that it’s all going to come spilling out and ruin absolutely _everything_ if he stays still for one more second, Eliot leaves.  
  


* * *

  
The kingdom could be at threat of war if Eliot doesn’t go through with this wedding. _Will_ be at threat of war. That hasn’t changed –– isn’t going to change, bar some sort of crazy unforeseen act from their abandoner gods. He has no choice but to go through with it if he cares about his own people at all. Far more lives than just his are at stake.

Eliot tries to tell that to himself over and over again, and can manage it, which is how he knows it’s the truth. But. Still.

He spends the three days after kissing Quentin an absolute wreck. Wine-drunk around the clock, more than he’s been since the first week of this damn curse –– wrapped up in his thick duvet in his horribly empty bed, confining himself to his rooms so that the wrong person doesn’t hear the miserable truths he can’t help from blurting out about the aching dread in his heart. He doesn’t bother bathing or putting on any of his fancy outfits, or _even_ doing his _hair,_ which is how everyone knows something’s truly wrong with him.

“Do you have the flu or are you just being a little bitch about something?” Margo asks on the fourth day, ripping open the curtains across from his bed with a sharp twist of her fingers. All he can see from the huge windows is a white expanse of snow, the whole landscape quilted in it. A sickly thump in his gut makes him spend a moment anxiously hoping Quentin’s journey is okay through the weather. He quickly forces himself to put such thoughts out of his mind.

‘ _Flu’,_ he tries for a moment to respond, so wrapped up in his own misery that he’s forgotten the other source of his troubles. But, of course, troubles never stay hidden long in Eliot’s life, and he’s abruptly reminded of this set when his words come out, muffled against the damp edge of the pillow his face is currently smushed into, “My heart hurts so much that I don’t know what to do and I’m afraid if I leave this bed and face the world I’m going to have to face all the horrible decisions which are soon going to be affecting the rest of my entire life. And I miss Quentin.”

He seriously fucking hates this curse.

From his tangled position in the bed, Eliot drains the dregs of a goblet of wine from the bedside table, and then rolls back across the mattress, edge of his duvet in hand, until he’s wrapped up entirely like a burrito and not an inch of his face is poking out. He hears, faintly muffled, a heavy sigh, and then a few moments later the gentle weight shift of the mattress as Margo joins him on the bed.

She rolls close and lays her head atop what is roughly the region of his blanket-clad chest.

“The delegation from Loria will be here in three days.” Her voice is gentle, for Margo –– which is not all that gentle for anyone else, but still means a lot if you know her –– but her words don’t pull a single punch. “The first day of the wedding festival is a week after. Eliot, you’ve got to get your shit together.”

He knows she’s right. He just doesn’t have a clue what that _means.  
  
_

* * *

  
That night, Eliot finally gets out of bed and does his hair and puts on some nice but relatively incognito clothes, goes into the city, and fucks a guy in a tavern.

He’s not sure whether the guy knows who he is or not. It doesn’t particularly matter to El. He feels absolutely petrified, and the only two ways he’s ever found to solve that have been alcohol and sex. There’s no law against drinking when you’re married, thank _all_ the gods, but Eliot is sickeningly aware, even as he’s getting probably one of the top ten blowjobs of his life from a rather handsome young adventurer, that this might be the last sex he ever gets to have with anyone other than Idri. 

There are so many complicated elements to that in Eliot’s own mind. Some of it boils down to the first ways he ever found freedom as a queer teenager, driving to the nearest city from his shitty small town and sneaking into gay bars and getting involved in things which were probably a little age-inappropriate for him, looking back, but still felt like the closest thing to heaven he’d ever reached. Some of it boils down to unhealthy coping mechanisms he’s employed ever since, but also to some of the best times he’s had in his life –– in college, and later at Brakebills, just throwing himself into every wild fling with every gorgeous boy who came his way, making the most of the life his younger self would have thought he’d never get. Some of it is just straight up hedonism, but Eliot decidedly doesn’t think that’s a bad thing.

Some of it boils down to Quentin.  
  
Okay, more than he’d like to admit boils down to Quentin. The fact that, if he has one end-of-the-world lay, it feels practically criminal for it to not be with Quentin Coldwater. But how Eliot also knows that in a lot of ways, that would be far more unfair, and hideously difficult for both of them. Maybe it’s better that it’s with someone whose name he doesn’t even know. Someone who’s more a concept than a partner. It’s a shitty thing to think, but it reminds Eliot, at least, of the part sex has played through the last decade of his life. And it’s all about more than sex, anyway. He’s terrified from every direction.

There’s so much of himself that he’s about to lose. 

* * *

  
Between the curse and the war threat and his engagement and the ever-confounding problem that is Quentin Coldwater, there is one thing that Eliot has been seriously neglecting in his life: his honorary goddaughter. Fray pops into his mind one night. He realises he’s only seen her once since that night he had to miss her weird Fillorian birthday party, and she had seemed distracted that entire time. With Quentin off on his research trip anyway, Eliot thinks it will be particularly good to see Fray.

He sends word via messenger that he’d like to spend a day with her at the weekend. Being banned by Margo from so many royal obligations means that he has plenty of free days, technically, more than he’s actually had in the entire time Fray’s known him –– he’s just been using them all up with existential angst, wine fuelled hazes, and Quentin. It’s not fair, really, and he does miss her, no matter how odd their little relationship is.

She sends word back with the same messenger, who repeats with flushed cheeks, anxiously picking at his fingernails and not meeting Eliot’s eyes; “Fine, but get here early because I don’t have all day. Bitch.”

Eliot was the one who taught Fray the word _bitch,_ almost five years ago now. It makes him feel oddly touched.

So. That weekend he dresses up in all his thickest clothes and most luxurious furs, and takes Fray out for the day.

She lives in the town nearest the castle, just a short trip on the road through the woods. He’s offered her several times to move into the castle, but she likes the town –– likes being among friends, her foster mother Fen and the odd groups of locals she’s befriended there. Still, Eliot wants her to himself, selfishly, so he takes her away from the town. She’s grouchy, only raising an unimpressed eyebrow at him as he bundles her into the luxurious royal carriage. Unimpressed in Fray’s natural state, so he doesn’t take it personally.

“So, darling, how’s life?” he asks, instead, trying to engage her, as they rock and bump along the dirt path from the cush insides of the carriage. “I feel like it’s been too long since we talked. I want to know what’s going on with you.”

“Do you?” Fray asks, with a snort. Her arms are crossed inside her cloak. Eliot just raises an eyebrow back at her –– she forgets, he thinks, that two can play at her game, and Eliot plays with the best of them.

“ _Yes.”_

And, of course, he can’t be lying. Fray deflates a little, and shrugs, picking at her fingernails for a moment and suddenly looking far more teenage, far more like the near kid that she is.

“I’m alright. I mean, pretty good, actually. I kind of –– uh, kind of have a boyfriend?”

And _that_ is exactly the kind of thing up Eliot’s conversational alley. Eyes lighting up, he leans forward and asks her a hundred questions, in full gossip mode.

Of course, this is Fillory, so gossip mode isn’t like it was when _he_ was sixteen. For instance, it turns out that Fray’s new boyfriend is a bear. Literally.  
  
Well, to each their own. Eliot’s dated some pretty hairy guys in the past too.

They’ve just exhausted the amount of things he can reasonably ask a sixteen year old about the teenage grizzly bear she’s dating when the carriage comes to a halt. This is what Eliot has been excited for, and he can’t help breaking out into a smile as he offers his arm to escort Fray out of the carriage.

The sight that meets them is –– beautiful. Beyond Eliot’s power to describe. _Like something out of another world,_ he would have said, if he hadn’t crossed all the boundaries of worlds and their confines already, if he didn’t know that there was beauty everywhere and it didn’t matter where you found it.

There’s a huge lake, a few miles behind Whitespire. A magic lake, rumour has it, although Eliot’s never seen any magic coming off of it. Now, with the cold in the air and the depths of winter enveloping them, the entirety of the vast lake has frozen over.

With the pale sun still peeking over the mountains in the distance, the icy surface glints and gleams like pure diamond. A gentle mist is rising off the surface, blue-tinted and constant, giving just enough indistinctness to make the entire scene look like some sort of oil painting. Everything is still –– the gentle trees bowed over the edges of the lake not swaying, only the bravest of birds still chirping tiny songs from their branches, and just that mist, rising and falling like living breath, to keep them company.

“I thought we could go ice skating,” Eliot says, pulling out the two pairs of skates he had the castle’s tailor and blacksmith work together to build for them.  
  
Fray tells him, “I’ve never done that before.”

“It’s an earth thing,” Eliot assures her, and then she lets him hold her hand for an hour, showing her all the tricks he knows –– first just how to move, and then moving faster, and spinning, and going backwards, and wobbling her knees in and out, and she watches as he even does a jump, and her pearls of laughter are perhaps the first un-tainted happiness Eliot has felt in months.

Sometimes, Eliot thinks he’s too broken to ever be around kids –– not that Fray’s really a kid anymore, is right on that cusp into being a real adult, but that her role in _his_ life is as a child figure, someone for him to protect and guide. He’s been shit at it for the entire time he’s known her, really. And his own dad had beat into him a complete terror of fucking up another generation, so quick that Eliot had vowed he’d never have children of his own before he even hit puberty.

Sometimes, though –– just sometimes, he thinks about what it would be like. Because there are parts of being around Fray which just act, to Eliot, like pure joy. 

When they’re done skating, they come to the edge of the lake and drink hot Fillorian wine on the rocks, and, finally, Eliot can say what’s on his mind.

“I feel bad for missing your party last month,” he says. Fray goes tense beside him, her hands clutched around her drink, and she won’t look his way. He hadn’t intended it to be a huge moment, just something he wanted to get out in the open with her, because he doesn’t really do _big_ apologies, and is awkward enough with the small ones.

It’s something about her reaction, though. Like his small moment of truth has pierced her shell.

Whatever curse has been placed upon him seems to respond to that. The urge to tell her everything is like a physical _pull,_ as if someone’s attached a tow hook to his gut.

So all at once, he just –– speaks.

He can’t control it, the way it all comes tumbling out. How stressed he is about the alliance for their kingdom and how he’s not supposed to tell anyone that they’re on the brink of war so he lied to her, which was shitty, but how he’s also really terrified that he’s a terrible king, and he can’t even do most of his duties these days because someone’s put a stupid curse on him and if he mutters the wrong harsh truth at the wrong moment, he could send them into full-on war, and how the only way he can help is by getting married, but he’s not even sure he’s going to be able to do that if this spell doesn’t drop soon, because the truth is he _doesn’t_ want to do it, not when he thinks about how own life rather than the greater good, and it’s all just –– terrible, and strange, and so much pressure to be resting on the shoulders of a man who has spent his entire life trying to not be needed for anything by anyone.

By the time he’s done speaking, his spiced wine has gone cold. The dregs of it are sloshing miserably around in the bottom of his goblet.

He pours it onto the frost-stiff grass beneath them rather than drinking it, and then wraps his arms around himself, feeling liable to split at the seams.

“That’s a lot of shit, Eliot,” says Fray, wise as ever. There’s something thick in her voice and she’s not quite meeting his eyes. Eliot suddenly worries that he dumped too much on her all at once. This fucking spell –– making him say things he’d never say under his right mind.

Eliot sighs and lowers his head.

“I hope you know I care about you, Fray,” he says. “Truly.”

It’s the first time in recent weeks, or maybe almost ever, that he’s said something so vulnerably true without feeling like it was forced out of him.

Fray looks down at her hands, doesn’t respond. It feels like he can see the sharp edges of her wriggling around, not sure where to go.

So he continues. “I know I’m not always good at saying it. I can take the blame for that. I have a lot of not-delightful emotional issues left over from my own dad.”

Fray perks up. Still doesn’t meet his eyes, but shifts closer to him where they sit, just a little.

“What was your father like?” she asks.

Eliot has never mentioned his own parents around her. He is extremely conscious of that fact. He’s never really mentioned them in front of anyone, except Margo, and even then only in the most forced-out moments. But right now, well –– he can’t lie. And doesn’t really want to lie to her, he thinks. 

“He was shitty,” he says. “Both my parents were. Mom because she didn’t do anything about the rest of it. Dad just –– for every reason. Didn’t understand me, didn’t want to. Hit me. Tried to make me hate everything about myself. I ran away as soon as I finished high school, but some parts of me didn’t run far enough, I guess.”

Silence, for a long beat: the longest beat Eliot has ever let be silent without making some sort of joke or offering booze as a distraction or just straight up walking away, he thinks.

Then, he adds: “I’m terrified of messing things up for you. _With_ you. More than anything else in the world, I don’t want to be like my father.”

“That’s okay,” Fray says. “I never needed you to be a father. I just wanted to know you cared. It’s nice to hear you being honest.”

Eliot feels something strange inside his chest shift.

Fray looks up, at last, meeting his eyes, and Eliot reaches out to pull her into a hug. He thinks of her, for a moment, as Margo. Or not _as_ her, but as the similarities between them. His two sharp-edged young women. Two of the only people who have ever really pulled any emotional honesty, kicking and screaming, from his deadlocked cage of a past.

Well, them, and maybe one more. Maybe Quentin.

Eliot can admit that, in the safety of his mind. Into Fray’s hair, he mutters, “I’m glad to hear you have a nice boyfriend. I’m kind of in love with someone too.”

He says it out loud, and he feels okay.  
  


* * *

  
Two days later, Quentin arrives back at the castle from his trip. Eliot stays up late to greet him, and is thrilled that he does –– Quentin is entirely buzzing with excitement, his arms stuffed full of books and papers, crumpled hand-drawn maps and reams of notes from his travels, which he drops all over the floors of Eliot’s chambers as he paces around gleefully, recounting his entire adventure to Eliot in a tumble of words so fast that Eliot barely gleans the actual content of any of the stories. That’s fine, though; he’s happy just laying there, sprawled out atop his own bed, while Quentin regales him with adventures. Quentin’s eyes glow in the light from the fire and he gets warmer as he paces around, stripping out his thick coat to just his shirtsleeves, the more traditional Fillorian underclothes he’s finally acquiesced to wearing. There’s a glint of sweat on his brow that makes Eliot want to do filthy things to him, but instead, he just listens.

The next night, Eliot’s fiancé arrives.

King Idri is as gorgeous and smooth-voiced as Eliot remembers him. He’s friendly but not pushy, greets Eliot with a kiss on the cheek and a gentle joke, and it’s not even pushing the boundaries of Eliot’s curse to say, “Idri, it’s good to see you.”

But it’s pushing the boundaries to say much more beyond that. When Eliot sees Quentin skulking around the back doorway of the welcoming chambers, his brow furrowed into a miserable twist as he looks around the huge procession from Loria, El has to clamp his jaw tight shut for the rest of the hour just to avoid saying something which will ruin _everything._

The next time Eliot looks that way, Quentin has gone. He doesn’t see him again for two more days.  
  


* * *

  
“If you show me one more fucking cake with _out_ filligree icing incorporating both the royal crests, I am gonna rip your balls off and feed them to you with this _very_ blunt fucking fork. Have you got it, asshole? Get it together, people, come one!”

The sound of Margo clapping her hands together echoes through the whole chamber, and jolts Eliot out of his stupor. He’s been nibbling around the edges of the same cake sample from the royal baker for about fifteen minutes without even making note of the flavour. This is _entirely_ unlike him. He puts his fork down and tries to school his face into a neutral expression, so that nobody –– particularly Margo, who has hired a royal wedding planner but also seems to be attempting to do the guy’s entire job herself –– will notice.

Wedding preparations are underway, but Eliot has never felt less prepared for anything in his life.

There are a lot of sucky parts to the entire process. It sucks that the entire castle has been taken over by what seems like every mildly influential person in Loria, and suddenly Eliot can’t escape to any of his coveted moping spots, or even turn his head to sneeze, without bumping into some diplomat who wants to drag him into a conversation just when he most wants to be left alone. It sucks that his own royal advisors still keep pulling he and Margo aside with worries about the state of their international relations when Eliot is sacrificing _everything_ to make sure things don’t come to war. It sucks that Idri is so genuinely friendly and personable but that Eliot can’t help but resent him. It sucks that Eliot still has to try not to say a single word around his own fiance for fear that all the truths desperate to escape him will just come tumbling right out, and knock down this whole house of cards. That caution, that fear, might actually be the worst part of all of it.

Okay, no. Truthfully, the worst part is: he can see what it’s doing to Quentin.

Eliot’s always been pretty good at recognising when guys find him hot. When guys would be down to sleep with him. When guys are idolising him, crushing on him, are even deluding under the idea that they’re in love with the persona he puts on for the world.

He’s never, until now, felt what he feels with Quentin.

Eliot thinks Quentin might be in love with him.

Now, Eliot is aware that _he_ is in love with _Quentin._ Has been aware of it for several weeks. It’s unfortunate, but if it were just his own misery, Eliot could stomach it. He’s never had what he wanted in his entire life, and he’s good at skirting the line between hedonism and misery. Being in love with Quentin and getting married to someone else would be passably okay, because he’d get to see Quentin, still, as a friend –– and know Quentin was happy –– and then he’d have a pretty hot husband to have sex with, even if there was no real love between them –– and it would all even out to something like Eliot is used to. Not a great situation, but good enough. Only halfway miserable. Only miserable in regards to his own _emotions,_ but fine in objectively every other way.

Quentin loving him back is far, far worse. Because it means Eliot is going to break Quentin’s heart. Quentin Coldwater, who has the softest, rawest, most beautifully bleeding heart in the whole world.

Eliot has never been faced with anything quite as terrifying as that before.

“Well, I’m partial to the chocolate cake,” says Idri, from the chair beside Eliot, and Eliot swallows. “What do you think, my groom?”

“I truly couldn’t care less what kind of cake we have,” Eliot says, before he can help it. Margo shoots him a sharp look from across the room, but luckily Idri just laughs, patting the back of Eliot’s hand.

“You make a good point. It only really matters what the guests will like –– this wedding is far more for them than it is for us. Let’s go with the traditional option.”

It feels like some sort of gesture. Everything Idri does feels that way –– firm but fair, like a man with his country’s best interest at heart who is also really fucking trying to make something good work out, here.

Eliot’s head hurts. His stomach is churning in a way he can’t possibly blame on the tiny slivers of cake he’s been eating. He leans back in his chair, and reaches for a flagon of wine, time of day and Tick’s concerned looks be damned.

None of this is what he signed up for when he became king. None of this is what he wants, or what’s right. And it’s not fair that he has to bite his own tongue to keep from screaming that to the rooftops.  
  


* * *

  
Quentin dumps a huge pile of books out on the table, shoving his hands restlessly into the pockets of his hoodie and standing above them. From the small on the other side of the coffee table, Eliot just looks at him.

Eliot has come to Quentin’s room again. He feels like he’s going stir crazy with the amount he’s been cooped up in his own rooms lately, and it’s a welcome break to be somewhere else. Actually –– maybe it’s welcome to be here, specifically. Eliot adores Margo and has always found comfort in the way she bends her sharp edges for him, but other than that, he’s never really _had_ anyone who felt like a relief to be with. Being around Quentin, though. It’s just –– it’s so different. It feels like someone is wrapping Eliot’s heart up in a soft blanket each time he sees one of Quentin’s dorky Fillory novels tucked under a stack of serious history books, or even a stray pair of his socks lying on the floor beside the desk. All these little reminders that Quentin exists, functions in every small way, sort of seem like a blessing.

If he had any sense of self preservation, Eliot knows he’d be staying as far away from Quentin as possible. Instead, he’s trying to drink up every possible second with him, knowing it’s soon all going to get ripped away one way or another.

And, in his defence, Quentin asked to see _him_ this time.

“I haven’t been able to find _anything_ about truth curses!” Quentin is saying, twisting his arms all up in knots with the energy of his frustration. “In the whole castle library! I mean, there’s a few instances of truth spells, sure, but they seem to all be either ritual based, or the sort of thing that only lasts an hour. An extended, seemingly permanent curse like you’ve got is completely unusual. I tried seeing if maybe it was something that just affected kings or whatever, too –– like, the High King is beholden to truth on every leap year because of an ancient writ of the Gods, or something fucked like that.” He rips his hands back out of his pockets to snatch up one of the thick books on the table, marked to an open page, and shoves it in front of Eliot’s nose. Eliot pretends to read but isn’t really taking anything in. “But there was nothing. I mean, there were like a dozen _other_ royal curses I wanna talk to you about at some point, but for this...”

Eliot’s stomach feels tumultuous and strange as he pulls away and looks at Q’s face; all distraught, thick brows drawn together, his hair frazzled at the sides like he’s been tugging at it.

“I didn’t mean for you to spend all your time on this,” Eliot says, suddenly guilty. He always manages to just drag down the people he cares for. “You’re supposed to be focusing on research for your class –– that’s the whole reason you’re here. You shouldn’t be worrying about me.”

“It hasn’t been _all_ my time,” Q says, his cheeks going a little sheepishly pink. He finally rounds the table and comes to sit beside Eliot on the couch. “Just a few free days. I just — I mean, I just want to make sure you’re okay, that’s all.”

It’s almost a bodily reflex to say _I’m fine,_ or some version of that in a slightly flirtier and more charmingly deflective way, but, of course, Eliot can’t. It’s not true.

Instead, he says, “I care more about you being okay, though. You shouldn’t waste the time you have here on me. You should be focusing on what you love.”

It’s the wrong word to use. _Love._ Eliot tries to swallow it back down the moment he says it, but it’s already done, and his whole body prickles white hot.

This, whatever it is between them, suddenly feels like a physical thing. A presence in the room with them –– not just in the room, but like it’s shoved onto the couch with them, hard edges pressing them together. They’re already touching from shoulder to hip sat so close together on the couch, but Eliot’s been holding himself at bay, at least.

Eliot bites his own tongue to stop any more truths spilling out of him. But Quentin is looking right into his eyes, and it’s like he’s hearing them all anyway. Eliot’s wearing a full set of winter clothes and has never felt more naked.

“You know, someone who can only tell the truth,” Quentin says, and his bottom lip is trembling, and it’s all Eliot can focus on, “You’re still really good at avoiding saying anything real.”

“Well. I’ve always been good at that. It runs in my family.”

Eliot can’t decide if it’s ironic or perfectly fitting that a lifetime of trying to shut down every emotional part of himself, his _type_ has become guys who just bleed feeling. His type has become Quentin, who couldn’t possibly live with his emotions any closer to the surface.

Quentin, who is suddenly leaning closer, one hot hand on Eliot’s knee, so close their noses are nearly touching, and looking right into Eliot’s eyes, right _through_ Eliot’s eyes, right into the heart and soul of everything about him. It feels deeper than anything he’s confessed because of the truth curse; it feels deeper than anything Eliot even knew to be true about himself. Quentin’s eyes are dredging his depths for things buried his whole life. Cracking him open until every inside part of him is laid on display, raw and vulnerable.

The killing blow. Quentin says, “I want you, Eliot. Don’t you want me?”

And Eliot, for the first time in his life that a boy has ever asked him anything like that or anything similar, can’t lie. So he doesn't.  
  


* * *

  
The thing about love is –– it can change absolutely everything in your heart, but you wake up in the morning, and the world is still the same.

He knew it would happen. Had been foolish enough to maybe delude himself into thinking that _because_ he had finally given in to love and all the terrifying, glorious vulnerability and beauty of it, some sort of cosmic force would recognise the change and shift all of reality to match it. But no. 

Eliot wakes up in Quentin Coldwater’s bed, with a gorgeous man sprawled across his chest, arms wrapped around him tight like a cuddle-vice, blinking at him blearily with some truly ridiculous bedhead. 

“I keep trying to think,” Eliot says, through a voice rough with both sleep and discontent, “Of what I could say to get out of this. Could I invent some lie? Tell Idri I’m –– I’m already married, or I can’t _get_ married, or that some extremely important mage on a mountain somewhere sent a prediction saying we should all just get along without making any rash decisions. But no matter what I come up with, the truth is, it’s not going to work. If we don’t make an official, _permanent_ alliance with Loria, we’re going to war. Half our citizens could lose their homes or their land or their lives. And it makes me miserable, and it makes me even _more_ miserable to know that it hurts _you,_ but I just can’t see a way out of this.”

After weeks of painful truths, this is perhaps the most painful one of all.

Quentin shifts against Eliot’s chest, and his body is tense, El can feel it, can feel the upset little tick of his breath. The air in the room around them is freezing since the fire went out overnight, but oh so warm where they’re touching each other beneath the thick duvet. _Everything other than this bed right here is out to get us,_ Eliot thinks.

“Can’t you just –– couldn’t you just, like, _talk_ to Idri?” Quentin asks. His voice is quiet and wavers in the middle of his words, like it’s barely straining out of his throat. “You could just try and make an alliance based on friendship and contracts, couldn’t you? But tell him you can’t get married, because you –– you love someone else?”

Eliot’s heart clutches inside his chest. It’s more painful than anything he’s ever felt, he thinks for just a second. He closes his eyes, tips his head to the ceiling.

“People fuck over deals like that all the time, Quentin. Marriage is –– it’s an _intense_ thing here, in Fillory. You know about that, right, all the magic marriage contract shit here?” Quentin nods miserably against his chest. “That’s why it’s seen as so fucking reliable for political allying. It’s one of the only things that can really bind you to another person, and everything that’s theirs, too. For life. I could try and angle for another sort of deal, it’s true, I could try, but –– Q, I just don’t know if it would work. And I don’t know if I can bet the lives of my people on it.”

That’s what it comes down to in the end, isn’t it?

“I love you, Eliot,” says Quentin, so quiet that most of his voice is lost in Eliot’s shoulder. Eliot catches the words and holds them in his mind and knows he’ll never forget them, will never forget the feeling of hearing them –– of hearing that phrase at all, something so few people have _ever_ said to him, but especially of hearing it from the most amazing man in an infinite number of worlds. 

It also doesn’t escape Eliot’s notice that even as Quentin’s saying it, it doesn’t sound like he’s asking for anything. It doesn’t sound like he’s trying to convince. It sounds almost like he’s –– resigned. And like he wants to say the words just to say them.

Eliot runs his finger up and down the soft skin of Quentin’s bare shoulder, traces to the base of his neck and winds up a strand of his silky soft hair. He’s so gorgeous to touch.

“I have to be a king. I have to put the safety of all the thousands of people living in my kingdom before what would just make me happy. I have to, Quentin.”

His voice comes out like he’s begging. Quentin doesn’t say anything back, but he doesn’t leave the bed, either. They just lay there for a long, long time, as the weak white light of the winter sun rises beyond the windows.  
  


* * *

  
By now, winter has truly crept into every edge of the castle, carrying flurries of a bitter sort of cold which can only be fought back so far by the roaring fireplaces in the occupied rooms, until it always stings just a little and you’re always sweaty-hot on one side and bitten cold the other. It’s not ideal, but Eliot’s always liked winter –– something about the slow feeling of it, the way it makes people want to just _stop_ for a while.

Even if the depths of the most miserable decisions of his life, he feels like the snowstorm outside is battering against the passage of time as much as it is the castle walls, and gives him at least a moment to be able to do this: to curl up with Margo, his head in her lap as they lounge in front of the crackling fireplace in her chambers, drinking their way through the most expensive wine in the castle and talking about whatever they want.

It’s crazy, now, to think that he’s known Margo for nearly _ten years._ Of course, ever since the first day they met he’s felt like he’s known her all his life. But to actually count up the time is just surreal. He’s known her longer than any other friend he’s ever had. And he’s sure that if you added up cumulative hours, he’s spent more time with her than with any member of the family he lived with for nearly twice the amount of time.

There are a lot of places in Eliot’s life which feel hideously unlucky, at the moment, but his friendship with Margo isn’t one of them.

The stiff brocade of her elaborate dress isn’t particularly comfortable to lay his head on, but the way she’s stroking his curls back from his forehead more than makes up for it, a few hours into the evening, as Margo says, fondly, “Do you remember our coronation?”

“You mean, two days into our supposed vacation when we’d smoked a full pipe of Fillorian weed and I was trying to get you to do the Dirty Dancing lift with me in that lake because I was convinced I was Patrick Swayze, and then a corpse in a suit of armour suddenly tackled me into the water screaming “ _the fated king has arrived!”_ before immediately drowning and dying all over again?” He carefully tips another sip of wine into his mouth without sitting up from his sprawled recline in her lap. “It’s been kind of hard to forget.”

“Hasn’t it just,” she agrees, and touches his forehead with a sigh. He’s struck rather suddenly by the fact that her voice sounds older than her years, but her eyes are still all Bambi newness as she stares down at him. “Would you ever have thought then that we’d end up here?”

“I didn’t think I’d end up anywhere,” says Eliot, without really thinking about it. “But getting _married?_ And against my will, at that? That’s a particularly strong no.”

“Shit, Eliot.” Eliot looks into the fireplace rather than up at Margo, watching little bursts of orange sparks jump away from the charred logs and out towards them, desperately bidding for freedom. Margo’s hand twists in his hair. “Listen. You know I give a shit about Fillory –– like, a whole fucking lot of a buttload of shits –– and I _really_ want this alliance to work out, but I actually don’t wanna force you to do this if you don’t want to. I mean, seriously, El, I’m sure we’ve figured our way out of way worse scraps than this. It’s what we’re good at! If you want to tell Idri to fuck off, just _do_ it, okay, and fuck the consequences.”

Eliot’s lip quirk up at the corners, but there’s no humour in it. He actually feels a little like he might cry.

“I can’t say fuck the consequences, Margo. Maybe I could have five years ago, or ten, but –– ugh, fucking sue me, but I suppose I’ve really started to care.”

“Disgusting,” says Margo, with adoration, and kisses him on the forehead. “Well, I’m proud of you. Hard choices and all. Maybe you’ll forget all about Coldwater once the Lorian wonderking fucks you down into your marital mattress next week, right?”

Eliot has a lot to say in response to _that_. Unfortunately, this is precisely the moment that a knock echoes through the door, and throws him right back into reality –– into the whole reason he and Margo are getting drunk in her bedroom before dinner while wearing their ridiculously fancy outfits to begin with.

“Come on. Let’s go kick off the official first day of your wedding festival,” Margo says, slapping his butt and tipping the rest of her wine into his mouth, too. She clearly knows he needs it more than she does. “Idri’s waiting.”  
  


* * *

  
The whole world outside is painted white, gleaming even under the pitch black of late evening, the whole landscape itself gone quiet like it’s settled down for rest.

The inside of Castle Whitespire couldn’t be more different if it tried.

The opening party to kick off the traditional week-long royal marriage festival is huge. The biggest party Eliot has hosted, ever, let alone just in Fillory. People from all walks of life are crammed into the Grand Ballroom; all the important people from Loria mingling as they listen to the exuberant orchestra play, the high-ups of Fillory jovially chatting over glasses of wine. Every Fillorian Lord has been invited –– even the inanimate ones, such as the sword who was elected by their third district, and has been carried to the party on a plush ceremonial pillow by some of its constituents. Most of the buffet is swarmed by talking animals. A large crowd of commoners and civilians from the local towns are even in attendance, spilling out into the courtyard and corridors, enjoying a rare chance to experience royal revelry, especially in the harsh dead of winter. It feels like there’s just joy, all around –– and even if it is all just ceremonial bullshit, Eliot can’t help getting a little caught up in it.

He always has been a sucker for a good party.

He tries to avoid Idri, at least removing that confusing variable from his side, and is thankful that in the world of politics and royalty, it doesn’t seem too weird for the fiance’s to not be together at their own party. That way he can just enjoy the fun. He loses track of how many people shake or kiss his hand within the first hour –– the amount of _congratulations_ he hears –– the amount of unidentifiable voices telling him he looks wonderful, or how excited they are for the ceremony at the end of the week, or how if they could just bend his ear for a _moment_ about politics now that the countries are going to be aligned they could really help with ––

There, at the back of the room, a little beacon of anxious fretting amidst the revelry going on all around, is Quentin Coldwater.

“Excuse me,” says Eliot, cutting off a giant toad with very well-formed opinions about border control in the middle of a sentence. The toad lets out a rather offended croak, but Eliot’s already pushing through the crowd, dodging people’s cheerful recognitions and heading to the doorway.

The second he reaches it, Quentin dodges around the edge. Eliot follows him. There are still trickles of partygoers out in the back corridor, but mainly just little pairs of people involved in their own conversations –– mostly people are staying confined to the ballroom, where it’s warm and you can hear the music. It’s dark out here, the stone walls of the corridor lit by only a couple of intermittent torches on the wall, and the shadows cast by the flickering light dance much slower than the partygoers inside.

Eliot finally catches up to Quentin in an alcove next to a rusty suit of armour, and catches his hand without thinking about it. His fingertips brush the edge of Quentin’s hoodie sleeve. Hoodie and jeans, the Coldwater standard.

“Well, you’re a sight for sore eyes, but you don’t look dressed for a party,” Eliot observes, forcing out a light chuckle even though his insides feel dense and glum. “Did nobody tell you the dress code?”

A long beat of silence.

The lump in Eliot’s throat feels huge and terrifying. He swallows and it’s an effort. Quentin isn’t looking into his eyes.

“I just wanted to tell you,” Quentin says, finally, as he observes the golden tips of Eliot’s shoes on the floor. Eliot’s quite proud of his outfit for the night –– gold brocade trousers and cropped suit jacket, with a nearly see-through chiffon shirt underneath which falls all the way to his knees, the perfect mixture of royalty and androgyny –– but he suddenly doesn’t feel good about anything, not even his clothes, when Quentin’s voice breaks between his words. “I wanted to tell you in person that I’m cutting my sabbatical short. It’s –– it’s nearly Christmas, back home, so I should probably be there for that, and, uh. Yeah. I don’t think it’s good, me being here, anymore. Tick’s got me a portal back, so I’m going to leave in a minute.”

Eliot’s whole world closes around him in an instant.

It’s not like the air going out of the room. It’s like the room coming into his air. It’s like he’s trying to breathe bricks, all of a sudden, and he just can’t catch them in his lungs, can’t gulp down anything because there’s stone pressing in on him from all sides –– and the only part that doesn’t hurt is the tiny point of touch where he’s still holding Quentin’s hand, cold from the winter chill.

The worst part, the wall suddenly smothering him the most, is the fact that he can’t blame Quentin. Can’t be mad or say he doesn’t understand. If it were all the other way around, Eliot would leave, too. What would be left for him? What _will_ be left for Quentin, once Eliot is married? Well –– all of Fillory, sure, but none of _Eliot._ If Quentin wants to be in Fillory, he’s probably made a hundred friends in his months here who’d be happy to host him next time. If he doesn’t want to, he never has to see Eliot again.

His eyes feel hot at the corners. Eliot scrunches them closed, and screams to himself, inside –– _speak! Just say something! Say anything!_

“I know I have no right to ask you to stay––”

“Yeah,” Quentin agrees, and just like that, Eliot’s throat closes up again. “El, it’s not –– I get it, okay. I’m not mad at you. How could I be? You know ––” And his voice sounds thick, like he’s almost as wrecked as Eliot feels. “You know how much I love Fillory, and you’re giving up everything to _help_ Fillory. It’s just –– I just can’t sit around and watch it happen, because it hurts. That’s all. And I’m trying really hard to not do things that hurt me anymore.”

Which is, fundamentally, something Eliot can’t argue with. He doesn’t want Quentin hurt. It’s actively the thing he wants the _least._ He wants the whole world to be gentle with Quentin.

Eliot says, “I love you.” His voice sounds awful. He’s not crying, but every part of his whole body is screaming at him to. In the meantime he just sounds _empty._ Haunted, almost. Everything scooped out. 

At least Quentin knows it’s the truth. Knows that it has to be.

“I love you too,” says Quentin, quieter than a whisper. He glances behind them for a moment, making sure the dark corridor is abandoned, and then reaches up, for one last moment, to kiss Eliot’s mouth.

The kiss is soft. Barely any force to it. Eliot can’t bring himself to turn it into something passionate, even knowing it’s the last one he may ever have. He just stands there, still, and lets Quentin brush their lips together, and then pull back.

“Goodbye, Eliot.”

Quentin finally removes his hand from Eliot’s grip, turns around, and walks away –– arms wrapped around himself, gait unsteady. Eliot watches him go. Even after he’s turned the corner, and the sound of his stupid converse against the castle floors has vanished, Eliot just watches.

* * *

  
“Now, whatever is the matter?” Idri asks, in his warm voice, sounding like he sort of actually wants to know. 

And Eliot feels a hard tug in his gut screaming at him, _tell the truth._

So he thinks: fuck it. And he does.

He tells Idri he’s conflicted because he’s in love with someone else. That he really wants their kingdoms to align, that he wants to broker peace, that he knows this is the surest way of doing this, but that his heart is torn in two –– between his kingdom and his love. That he has decided he cares more about the safety and prosperity of his people than he does about his own one life, but that it doesn’t _feel_ like that while he’s living it. That no matter how kind Idri seems and how much Eliot truly likes him –– and he does, and that almost makes it _worse,_ see –– Eliot’s heart is always going to be locked up, trapped outside of the bonds of their marriage, and he’s worried he’s ruining his whole life, and that he never knew being a King would mean sacrifices like this, and he doesn’t know how to do it, he just doesn’t know how to do _any_ of this and feel _okay._ Says it all, just like that –– a reel, barely pausing for breath, pacing along the stone floor, his head in his hands as wet begins to pool in the corners of his eyes. He can’t look. He knows he shouldn’t be saying any of this, but he’s compelled to say it anyway, and the best he can do is to say it with his eyes closed.

Which is why he doesn’t see it coming when, all of a sudden ––

Idri’s hand lands on Eliot’s shoulder.

Eliot stills in his frantic pacing immediately, feeling the heavy weight of Idri’s warm palm. He takes a deep breath, shuddering, and finally blinks his eyes open.

Idri is smiling.

“Eliot, why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” Idri asks. Eliot’s not sure how to respond, or even if he can anymore; he just shrugs, and Idri sighs. “I’ll admit, this complicates things. But I don’t want to trap you in anything, Eliot. I agreed to this alliance for the sake of my people, too, but my heart still lies with my late wife, and always will. I knew I had nothing to lose by binding myself for political reasons; if your love is still out in the world, though, and you can be with him in this lifetime? You should be.”

It sounds too good to be true; _is_ too good to be true. Eliot swallows. “What about the war?” 

Idri lets out a deeper sigh, considering for a moment, but his hand doesn’t drop from Eliot’s shoulder.

“I’ve been a king a whole lot longer than you have, Eliot. I make harsh decisions sometimes; I have to. But I’m not unreasonable, or unfair. There is a real problem with resources in this world, and the scales are tipped unfairly in Fillory’s favour because of the magic you’ve been able to wield here. But I don’t want a war any more than you do. If you’ll make an alliance with me, based in friendship –– and on paper, of course –– then we can surely come to some arrangement.”

It’s everything Eliot dared hope for. It’s everything he never thought he’d get. Thought was impossible, was too good to possible befall _him,_ of all people, who’d never been given a real shot at happiness, who’d spent his whole life learning to be okay with half-measures and better-than-nothings. He feels Idri’s words like they’re physical. It’s like they’ve reached in and, for the first time that he can ever remember, removed the lump from his throat entirely.

Eliot feels like he can breathe. Unobstructed.

“In another universe, I’m sure you would have been the most wonderful husband I’d ever had,” Eliot says. Idri grins.

“I sure would have. But as far as this universe goes, let’s put a pin in it. And hey, if things with your other boy don’t work out, I’m not going anywhere. Loria’s beautiful in the summer, you know.”

He winks, and Eliot finds within himself to laugh, for what feels like the first time in decades. Fuck. _Fuck._ What else is there to say?

* * *

  
Awash in a haze of gratefulness, Eliot stumbles around the hall for a few minutes, trying to find a break in the crowd and not quite sure what to do –– this whole event has suddenly become irrelevant, but he’s hardly the sort to cut off a party in its prime. He dodges the smiles and hugs of several well-meaning but entirely uninformed acquaintances, trying to make his way towards the bar. He thinks that if he’s ever deserved a glass of wine in his life, it’s right about now.

It’s only then that, all of a sudden, he bumps into Fray. He remembers inviting her, but hasn’t seen her all night for the crowd, and immediately wraps her up in a hug. She’s wearing one of her more fairy-esque dresses, which is still the standard she holds beauty to, even though it’s vastly out of fashion in Fillory. Eliot, who’s always had a passion for the unusual, thinks she looks gorgeous, even if part of her outfit appears to be made of moss. He’s careful not to disturb it as he twirls her into a hug.

“What’s up?” she asks, brusque as ever. “You look weird.”

“Can you keep a secret?” he asks. She just stares at him. “Okay, sure. Listen, I haven’t figured out how we’re going to announce it yet, so let the party play out first, but we actually just called off the engagement.”

He feels near giddy even from saying it. And, for once, it does manage to startle a reaction out of Fray. Both of her eyebrows shoot up and she takes a step back so that she can better look up at his face, studying him with her typical intensity.

“And that’s… a good thing?” she checks. Eliot eagerly nods, a curl bouncing in front of his eyes. “Right, because you were in love with that other man?”

He nods again. Not that El has yet figured out what to do about Quentin, if at all, but things are looking up –– looking less complicated than they have in months, at least.

“I never thought I would fucking say this,” he gushes, hunching down a little so he can grab her by the shoulders. “But thank the gods for this fucking truth curse, or I never would have said any of it, and I never would have known that Idri didn’t really want to get married either.”

Eliot’s not sure what response he’s expecting to that. He knows what he’s _not_ expecting. And he’s certainly not expecting Fray to just freeze up the moment he says that, her eyes going deer-in-the-carriage-lights wide.

“Er, Eliot?” she says, staring at the ground. She’s reminding him of Quentin, all of a sudden –– what is it with everyone and his shoes today? “The truth spell ended yesterday.”

Which is just about the last thing in the universe he expected her to say.

For a second, all he can do is blink. He feels like he’s just been handed a piece for a jigsaw he didn’t even know he was trying to solve, and it takes him several moments to know where to put it. After all this time, he still hadn’t even known _why_ he’d been unable to lie, or how it would possibly be fixed.

“Wait. This spell was –– was this _you?”_

 _“Well,”_ Fray says quickly, tucking her springy curls behind her ears like a nervous twitch. “It wasn’t a spell, exactly! More of a wish. I met this weird guy in the woods, see, just after you missed my Passage ceremony, and I was pissed. You’d lied about why you couldn’t come, and I –– I know _now_ that was because we were about to go to war, and stuff, but at the time I just thought you were being extra shitty. But after –– um, after the other day when you took me ice skating and we had that big talk about it all? I went to go and find him, and take it back. It took me a little while, I’m sorry, he was _really_ hard to track down. You’re –– you’re not mad, are you?”

She’s looking up at him through her lashes, cautious, a little scared. Mad’s not the word for it. Eliot’s not honestly sure _what_ he’s feeling. Relieved, in many ways, that something far worse wasn’t the caused. Guilty, too, that he’d made Fray feel so bad in the first place. Mostly, though, just ––

He was honest with Idri all on his own. He told Quentin he _loved him,_ all on his own –– something Eliot’s barely been able to say to another human being his whole life. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt more surprised than he does at this moment.

And, more than anything, there’s something he has to do.

He drags Fray into another hug, kissing the top of her head with lightning quickness, all manic energy suddenly pumping through his lanky limbs.

“I’m not mad, and I promise I’m not fobbing you off again, darling, we’ll talk soon, but I have to go and do something,” he says, already backing away from her. “Bring Humbledrum to dinner soon, I want to meet him!”

And then he turns, and _runs._

He doesn’t really care what the hundreds of gathered people think about seeing their king sprint away from his own party, although most of them are probably too drunk to notice at this point of the night anyway. He doesn’t care what any of the servants who notice him racing through the corridors might think, either, doesn’t care that his hair is getting messed up or that many years of cigarettes and wine and doing no exercise at all have left him horribly unfit and he’s panting by the time he gets up the staircase. He doesn’t even stop to bemoan why their castle has to be so huge and winding, why it has to take so long to get anywhere –– he just runs, and runs, like he’s never run before, until he’s skidding on the heels of his shiny gold shoes outside the door to Quentin’s chambers.

The door is closed. There are no sounds from inside.

“Please don’t be gone already,” Eliot whispers to the heavens, eyes squeezing closed for just one moment, before he wrestles his impossible courage up from the knot in his stomach, and pushes open the door.

Inside, Quentin is stood by the bed, tugging closed the buckle of his suitcase. All the little personal touches around his room have vanished, even the fire out, and he’s stood in just the light of a single candle sconce. His eyes look red; his hair’s a mess, as if he’s been running his hands though it too much. He’s bundled up in several of his faded old hoodies at once

And before Quentin even has a chance to react to his door opening, Eliot crosses the room in two strides of his long legs, still panting from the run, and drags him into a kiss.

This is nothing like their goodbye kiss, no gentle press of lips in stillness. This is every drop of passion Eliot has. He feels like he’s giving Quentin his _breath,_ through their gasps and open mouths, like he’s giving all of himself to Quentin as Quentin jolts and then grabs at him, like a reflex, hands winding into Eliot’s hands to pull himself up onto his tiptoes –– and Eliot’s arms wind around the small of Quentin’s back to help lift him up. Time folds in on itself, and Quentin’s lips are as red as his eyes when they finally pull apart.

Quentin looks like he thinks he might be dreaming; Eliot doesn’t give him a chance to say anything. Holding onto him so tight that it almost hurts, Eliot presses their noses together, and speaks right into Quentin’s mouth.

“I love you, Q. Quentin, I love you, I love you, I love you, and I called off the engagement.”

Pressed so close like this, Eliot can feel the moment Quentin reacts –– the moment his body tenses for a full second, and then releases all at once, melting into Eliot’s arms.

“What happened?” Quentin asks, breathless, blinking like he’s half in a daze but staring right into Eliot’s eyes. “Did –– it wasn’t the spell, was it? Did he ask something you couldn’t help responding to? I’m sorry, El––”

“No, it wasn’t that.” Eliot has never felt this giddy. No drug he’s ever been on has made him laugh the way he does in this moment –– high pitched and unbelieving, a laugh from the heavens themselves. “Actually, Q. The truth spell ended yesterday. I didn’t realise when it happened; I guess I got used to telling the truth. But I said exactly what I wanted to say to Idri. I was honest –– because I knew being honest is the only way I would get to have you.”

He feels more than hears the intake of Quentin’s breath. They’re looking right at each other. Is this the first time, Eliot wonders, is this maybe the first time he’s ever met someone’s eyes and not felt like he needed to hide something? No urge to deflect, to hide, to turn some part of himself off or move the situation entirely? If it is, he thinks he’s glad it’s with Quentin. Quentin, who deserves honesty more than anyone else. So Eliot keeps staring into his big brown eyes, seeing whole worlds of emotion swimming in them, and doesn’t look away.

“This –– maybe this doesn’t change anything, I don’t know. But at least I can ask you, now. So, Quentin, please. _Please_ don’t leave.”

“Of course I’m not fucking leaving!” says Quentin, and jumps into Eliot’s arms.

It’s all off kilter, and they go tumbling together back onto the bed, and kiss, and the kiss turns into a fit of laughter, Eliot sprawled on his back with Quentin perched above him on hands and knees, long hair draping around them like a curtain, turning everything into their own private world. They laugh into each other, still, as hands go exploring and they knock Quentin’s suitcase to the ground and keep laughing, and it’s just all love, joy, love and joy, and laughter, and kissing, and mouths, and love, and truth. It’s all truth.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading, guys! please leave a comment if you enjoyed it, and don't forget to go check out the amazing full versions of the art (linked as an inspired work below !!)


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